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THE  KASiDAH 

OF 

HAJI  ABDU  EL-YEZDI 


THE  SUNBURNT  POET 

R.  F.  B. 

(Trieste,  Oct.  20,  1890.) 

To  win  the  Theban  pri^e  each  brought  Ins  ode, 
When,  lo  !  a  stranger  stood,  wind-flusht  and  brown, 
Who  sang  the  wondrous  world  and  claimed  the  crown ; 
But  high  gods  sing  in  a  forgotten  mode. 
The' a  cried  he,  soaring  high  —  his  bright  feet  shod 
With  Day  that  quenched  the  day  and  hid  the  town  — 
"  Ye  spurn  Apollo  as  a  sunburnt  clown, 
Ye  pallid  priestlings  of  a  sunburnt  god!  " 

'  T  was  Phcebus'  self.     And  now  he  welcomes  thee, 
England's  brave  Burton,  dowered  of  sun  and  wind, 

Whose  songs  were  born  in  deserts  fierce  and  free, 
'Mid  dusky  Bedouins,  Mongols  yellow-skinned, 
In  Amazonian  woods,  in  wilds  of  hid, 

And  on  the  breast  of  Camoens'  mother-sea. 

THEODORE   WATTS -DUNTON. 


FROil  THE  ETCHING  BY  LEOPOLD  FLAMENO. 


THE  KASIDAH  OF  HAJ1 

ABDU  EL-YEZDi 
TRANSLATED  AND  ANNO- 
TATED BY  HIS  FRIEND 
AND  PUPIL.  F.  B. 


Portland,  Maine 
THOMAS  <B.  MOSHEI^ 

Mdccccxj 


This  Eighth  Edition  on 
Van  Gelder  paper  con- 
sists of  925  copies. 


COPYRIGHT 

THOMAS  B  MOSHER 

1896 


CONTENTS 


Foreword        . 

Elegy  by  A.  C.  Swinburne 

The  KAsfDAH 

To  the  Reader 

Notes 

Bibliography 


PAGE 

vii 


65 


I        i 


J***> 


JO. 


.& 


J\ 


i  Prefixed  to  the  title-pages  of  the  1880,  (S94,  and 
1900  quarto  editions  of  The  Kasidah.  The  meaning  of 
this  Arabic  inscription  is  :  Abdii  Haji  Al-Kasidah,  or, 
The  Lay  of  the  Higher  Law  by  Abdii  the  'Traveller. 


FOREWORD 

He  was  a  man  born  with  tby  face  and  throat, 

Lyric  Apollo ! 
Long  be  lived  nameless  :  bow  should  spring  take  note 

Winter  would  follow  ? 
Till  lo,  the  little  touch,  and  youth  was  gone  ! 

Cramped  and  diminished, 
Moaned  he,  "New  measures,  other  feet  anon  ! 

My  dance  is  finished  ?  " 
No,  that 's  the  world's  way. 


Lofty  designs  must  close  in  like  effects  : 

Loftily  lying, 
Leave  him  —  still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects, 

Living  and  dying. 

ROBERT   BROWNING. 

*  /~\  N  the  return  journey  from  Meccah,  when 
V^>/  Richard  Burton  could  secure  any  pri- 
vacy, he  composed  .  .  .  The  Kasidah,  or  The 
Lay  of  the  Higher  Law,  by  Haji  Abdu  El- 
Yezdi,  which  was  one  of  his  eastern  noms-de- 

plume.  In  his  little  foreword  to  the  reader, 
the  better  to  disguise  his  authorship,  he  calls 
himself  the  Translator,  and  signs  '  F.  B.,'  or 
Frank  Baker,  .  .  .  from  Francis,  his  second 
name,  and  Baker  his  mother's  family  name. 
It  was  written  twenty -seven  years  before  he 


FOREWORD 

ventured  to  print  it.  It  reminds  one,  more 
than  any  other  poem,  of  the  Rubdiydt  of 
Omar  Khayyam,  .  .  .  made  known  by  Mr. 
Edward  FitzGerald  in  1861,  at  one  and  the 
same  time  to  Richard  Burton,  to  Swinburne, 
and  to  Dante  Rossetti.  Richard  Burton  at 
once  claimed  him  as  a  brother-Sufi,  and 
said  that  all  his  allusions  were  purely  typi- 
cal, and  particularly  in  the  second  verse:  — 

'Before  the  phantom  of  False  morning  died, 
Metbougbt  a  Voice  within  the  Tavern  cried, 
"When  all  the  Temple  is  prepared  within, 
Why  nods  the  drowsy  worshipper  outside  ?  "  ' 

Yet  The  Kasidab  was  written  in  1853  —  the 
Rubdiydt  he  did  not  know  till  eight  years 
later." 

Such  is  the  account  given  by  Lady  Isabel 
Burton  in  her  preface  to  the  quarto  of  1894 
of  the  origin  of  a  poem  first  printed  in  1880, 
which  no  judicious  critic  can  fail  to  regard 
as  a  genuine  contribution  to  English  litera- 
ture. The  seal  and  superscription  of  its 
author  are  impressed  on  every  line ;  it  is 
infused  with  a  nobility  and  breadth  of 
thought  characteristic  of  the  Man.  One 
cannot  but  regret  that  there  is  no  record  of 
what  estimate,  if  any,  Burton  placed  upon 
his  magnum  opus.  Fortunately  Lady  Burton 
had  no  control  over  the  text,  and  The  Kastdab 
therefore  remains  as  it  was  written. 


FOREWORD 

Whether  anything  of  moment  was  derived 
from  Burton's  knowledge  of  FitzGerald's 
magnificent  redaction  need  cause  no  long 
debate.  Beyond  a  remarkable  parallelism 
in  the  opening  stanzas  of  the  two  poems,  of 
conscious  borrowing  no  trace  exists.  Not 
even  Omar  could  materially  modify  the  lan- 
guage or  shape  the  argument  of  a  mind 
saturated  with  an  Orientalism  so  occult 
and  profound.  Both  drew  from  one  great 
fountain  head;  yet  The  Kasidah  remains 
alone,  —  a  giant  monolith  upreared  beneath 
the  hoary  stars  upon  the  eternal  Plain  of 
Ages. 

Sir  Richard  Francis  Burton  was  born  March 
19,  1821,  and  died  at  Trieste,  October  20, 
1890.  The  equal  in  daring  of  Raleigh  and 
of  Drake,  the  peer  of  all  adventurous  souls 
since  a  new  world  was  given  Castile  and 
Leon,  his  name  is  writ  large  in  the  annals 
of  the  race.  In  that  elegy  which  we  now 
reprint  entire,  unrivalled  as  it  is  for  fiery- 
hearted  rapture  of  friendship,  Algernon 
Charles  Swinburne  has  rendered  homage  to 
the  greatest  Oriental  scholar  dead,  whom 
England  ever  knew  and  neglected.  Gather- 
ing himself  in  his  singing  robes  the  greatest 
poet  then  living  finally  dismisses  with  superb 
valediction  the  Man  who  had  come  to  the 
uttermost  Limit  of  Lands. 


FOREWORD 


There  may  be  greater  praise  than  this,  — 
there  may  be  greater  poetry,  —  but  if  such 
exist  I  know  not  where  to  find  them. 


ELEGY 


1869-1891 


Auvergne,  Auvergne,  O  wild  and  woful  land, 
O  glorious  land  and  gracious,  white  as  gleam 
The  stairs  of  heaven,  black  as  a  flameless  brand, 
Strange  even  as  life,  and  stranger  than  a  dream, 


Could  earth  remember  man,  whose  eyes  made  bright 
The  splendour  of  her  beauty,  lit  by  day 

Or  soothed  and  softened  and  redeemed  by  night, 
Wouldst  thou  not  know  what  light  has  passed  away  ? 


Wouldst  thou  not  know  whom  England,  whom  the  world, 
Mourns  ?     For  the  world  whose  wildest  ways  he  trod, 

And  smiled  their  dangers  down  that  coiled  and  curled 
Against  him,  knows  him  now  less  man  than  god. 


Our  demigod  of  daring,  keenest -eyed 

To  read  and  deepest  read  in  earth's  dim  things, 
A  spirit  now  whose  body  of  death  has  died 

And  left  it  mightier  yet  in  eyes  and  wings, 


The  sovereign  seeker  of  the  world,  who  now 

Hath  sought  what  world  the  light  of  death  may  show, 

Hailed  once  with  me  the  crowns  that  load  thy  brow, 
Crags  dark  as  midnight,  columns  bright  as  snow. 

Thy  steep  small  Siena,  splendid  and  content 
As  shines  the  mightier  city's  Tuscan  pride 

Which  here  its  face  reflects  in  radiance,  pent 
J Jy  narrower  bounds  from  towering  side  to  side, 

Set  fast  between  the  ridged  and  foamless  waves 
Of  earth  more  fierce  and  fluctuant  than  the  sea, 

The  fearless  town  of  towers  that  hails  and  braves 
The  heights  that  gird,  the  sun  that  brands  Le  Puy; 

The  huddled  churches  clinging  on  the  cliffs 

As  birds  alighting  might  for  storm's  sake  cling, 

Moored  to  the  rocks  as  tempest -harried  skiffs 
To  perilous  refuge  from  the  loud  wind's  wing; 

The  stairs  on  stairs  that  wind  and  change  and  climb 
Even  up  to  the  utmost  crag's  edge  curved  and  curled, 

More  bright  than  vision,  more  than  faith  sublime, 
Strange  as  the  light  and  darkness  of  the  world; 

Strange  as  are  night  and  morning,  stars  and  sun, 
And  washed  from  west  and  east  by  day's  deep  tide, 

Shine  yet  less  fair,  when  all  their  heights  are  won, 
Than  sundawn  shows  thy  pillared  mountain -side. 

Even  so  the  dawn  of  death,  whose  light  makes  dim 
The  starry  fires  that  life  sees  rise  and  set, 

Shows  higher  than  here  he  shone  before  us  him 
Whom  faith  forgets  not,  nor  shall  fame  forget. 


Even  so  those  else  unfooted  heights  we  clomb 

Through  scudding  mist  and  eddying  whirls  of  cloud, 

Blind  as  a  pilot  beaten  blind  with  foam, 

And  shrouded  as  a  corpse  with  storm's  grey  shroud, 

Foot  following  foot  along  the  sheer  strait  ledge 
Where  space  was  none  to  bear  the  wild  goat's  feet 

Till  blind  we  sat  on  the  outer  footless  edge 

Where  darkling  death  seemed  fain  to  share  the  seat, 

The  abyss  before  us,  viewless  even  as  time's, 
The  abyss  to  left  of  us,  the  abyss  to  right, 

Bid  thought  now  dream  how  high  the  freed  soul  climbs 
That  death  sets  free  from  change  of  day  and  night. 

The  might  of  raging  mist  and  wind  whose  wrath 
Shut  from  our  eyes  the  narrowing  rock  we  trod, 

The  wondrous  world  it  darkened,  made  our  path 
Like  theirs  who  take  the  shadow  of  death  for  God. 

Yet  eastward,  veiled  in  vapour  white  as  snow, 

The  grim  black  herbless  heights  that  scorn  the  sun 

And  mock  the  face  of  morning  rose  to  show 

The  work  of  earth-born  fire  and  earthquake  done. 

And  half  the  world  was  haggard  night,  wherein 
We  strove  our  blind  way  through :  but  far  above 

Was  light  that  watched  the  wild  mists  whirl  and  spin, 
And  far  beneath  a  land  worth  light  and  love. 

Deep  down  the  Valley  of  the  Curse,  undaunted 

By  shadow  and  whisper  of  winds  with  sins  for  wings 

And  ghosts  of  crime  wherethrough  the  heights  live  haunted 
By  present  sense  of  past  and  monstrous  things, 


The  glimmering  water  holds  its  gracious  way 

Full  forth,  and  keeps  one  happier  hand's-breadth  green 

Of  all  that  storm-scathed  world  whereon  the  sway 
Sits  dark  as  death  of  deadlier  things  unseen. 

But  on  the  soundless  and  the  viewless  river 

That  bears  through  night  perchance  again  to  day 

The  dead  whom  death  and  twin-born  fame  deliver 
From  life  that  dies,  and  time's  inveterate  sway, 

No  shadow  save  of  falsehood  and  of  fear 

That  brands  the  future  with  the  past,  and  bids 

The  spirit  wither  and  the  soul  grow  sere, 
Hovers  or  hangs  to  cloud  life's  opening  lids, 

If  life  have  eyes  to  lift  again  and  see, 

Beyond  the  bounds  of  sensual  sight  or  breath, 

What  life  incognisable  of  ours  may  be 

That  turns  our  light  to  darkness  deep  as  death. 

Priests  and  the  soulless  serfs  of  priests  may  swarm 
With  vulturous  acclamation,  loud  in  lies, 

About  his  dust  while  yet  his  dust  is  warm 

Who  mocked  as  sunlight  mocks  their  base  blind  eyes, 

Their  godless  ghost  of  godhead,  false  and  foul 
As  fear  his  dam  or  hell  his  throne  :  but  we, 

Scarce  hearing,  heed  no  carrion  church-wolf's  howl : 
The  corpse  be  theirs  to  mock ;  the  soul  is  free. 

Free  as  ere  yet  its  earthly  day  was  done 

It  lived  above  the  coil  about  us  curled : 
A  soul  whose  eyes  were  keener  than  the  sun, 

A  soul  whose  wings  were  wider  than  the  world. 


We,  sons  of  east  and  west,  ringed  round  with  dreams, 
Bound  fast  with  visions,  girt  about  with  fears, 

Live,  trust,  and  think  by  chance,  while  shadow  seems 
Light,  and  the  wind  that  wrecks  a  hand  that  steers. 

He,  whose  full  soul  held  east  and  west  in  poise, 

Weighed  man  with  man,  and  creed  of  man's  with  creed, 

And  age  with  age,  their  triumphs  and  their  toys, 
And  found  what  faith  may  read  not  and  may  read. 

Scorn  deep  and  strong  as  death  and  life,  that  lit 
With  fire  the  smile  at  lies  and  dreams  outworn 

Wherewith  he  smote  them,  showed  sublime  in  it 
The  splendour  and  the  steadfastness  of  scorn. 

What  loftier  heaven,  what  lordlier  air,  what  space 

Illimitable,  insuperable,  infinite, 
Now  to  that  strong-winged  soul  yields  ampler  place 

Than  passing  darkness  yields  to  passing  light, 

No  dream,  no  faith  can  tell  us  :  hope  and  fear, 

Whose  tongues  were  loud  of  old  as  children's,  now 

From  babbling  fall  to  silence  :  change  is  here, 

And  death  ;  dark  furrows  drawn  by  time's  dark  plough. 

Still  sunward  here  on  earth  its  flight  was  bent, 
Even  since  the  man  within  the  child  began 

To  yearn  and  kindle  with  superb  intent 
And  trust  in  time  to  magnify  the  man. 

Still  toward  the  old  garden  of  the  Sun,  whose  fruit 

The  honey-heavy  lips  of  Sophocles 
Desired  and  sang,  wherein  the  unwithering  root 

Sprang  of  all  growths  that  thought  brings  forth  and  sees 


Incarnate,  bright  with  bloom  or  dense  with  leaf 
Far-shadowing,  deep  as  depth  of  dawn  or  night: 

And  all  were  parcel  of  the  garnered  sheaf 
His  strenuous  spirit  bound  and  stored  aright. 

And  eastward  now,  and  ever  toward  the  dawn, 
If  death's  deep  veil  by  life's  bright  hand  be  rent, 

We  see,  as  through  the  shadow  of  death  withdrawn, 
The  imperious  soul's  indomitable  ascent. 

But  not  the  soul  whose  labour  knew  not  end  — 
But  not  the  swordman's  hand,  the  crested  head  — 

The  royal  heart  we  mourn,  the  faultless  friend, 
Burton  —  a  name  that  lives  till  fame  be  dead. 

ALGERNON    CHARLES    SWINBURNE. 


THE  KASIDAH 


Let  his  page 
Wbicb  charms  the  chosen  spirit  of  the  age, 
Fold  itself  for  a  serener  clime 
Of  years  to  come,  and  find  its  recompense 
In  that  just  expectation. 

SHELLEY. 


Let  them  laugh  at  me  for  speaking  of  things 
which  they  do  not  understand  ;  and  I  must  pity 
them  while  they  laugh  at  me. 

ST.   AUGUSTINE. 


TO  THE  READER 

The  Translator  has  ventured  to  entitle  a 
"  Lay  of  the  Higher  Law  "  the  following 
Composition,  which  aims  at  being  in  advance 
of  its  time;  and  he  has  not  feared  the  danger 
of  collision  with  such  unpleasant  forms  as 
the  "  Higher  Culture."  The  principles  which 
justify  the  name  are  as  follows  :  — 

The  Author  asserts  that  Happiness  and 
Misery  are  equally  divided  and  distributed 
in  the  world. 

He  makes  Self-cultivation,  with  due  regard 
to  others,  the  sole  and  sufficient  object  of 
human  life. 

He  suggests  that  the  affections,  the  sym- 
pathies and  the  "  divine  gift  of  Pity  "  are 
man's  highest  enjoyments. 

He  advocates  suspension  of  judgment, 
with  a  proper  suspicion  of  "  Facts,  the  idlest 
of  superstitions." 

Finally,  although  destructive  to  appear- 
ance, he  is  essentially  reconstructive. 

For  other  details  concerning  the  Poem 
and  the  Poet,  the  curious  reader  is  referred 
to  the  end  of  the  volume. 

F.    B. 

Vienna,  Nov.,  1880. 


THE  KASIDAH 

I 


The  hour  is  nigh  ;  the  waning  Queen  walks 
forth  to  rule  the  later  night ; 
Crown'd   with   the  sparkle   of  a  Star,  and 
throned  on  orb  of  ashen  light : 


The  Wolf-tail1  sweeps  the  paling  East  to 
leave  a  deeper  gloom  behind, 

And  Dawn  uprears  her  shining  head,  sighing 
with  semblance  of  a  wind : 


The  highlands  catch  yon  Orient  gleam,  while 
purpling  still  the  lowlands  lie; 

And  pearly  mists,  the  morning-pride,  soar 
incense-like  to  greet  the  sky. 


The  horses  neigh,  the  camels  groan,  the 
torches  gleam,  the  cressets  flare ; 

The  town  of  canvas  falls,  and  man  with  din 
and  dint  invadeth  air : 

i     The  false  dawn. 


THE    KASIDAH 


The  Golden  Gates  swing  right  and  left;  up 
springs  the  Sun  with  flamy  brow; 

The  dew -cloud  melts  in  gush  of  light;  brown 
Earth  is  bathed  in  morning -glow. 


Slowly  they  wind  athwart  the  wild,  and  while 
young  Day  his  anthem  swells, 

Sad  falls  upon  my  yearning  ear  the  tinkling 
of  the  Camel -bells  : 


O'er  fiery  waste  and  frozen  wold,  o'er  horrid 

hill  and  gloomy  glen, 
The  home  of  grisly  beast  and  Ghoul, "  the 

haunts  of  wilder,  grislier  men  ;  — 

VIII 

With  the  brief  gladness  of  the  Palms,  that 
tower  and  sway  o'er  seething  plain, 

Fraught  with  the  thoughts  of  rustling  shade, 
and  welling  spring,  and  rushing  rain ; 


With  the  short  solace  of  the  ridge,  by  gentle 

zephyrs  played  upon, 
Whose  breezy   head  and  bosky  side  front 

seas  of  cooly  celadon  ;  — 


The  Demon  of  the  Desert. 


THE    KAStDAH 


'T  is  theirs  to  pass  with  joy  and  hope,  whose 

souls  shall  ever  thrill  and  fill 
Dreams  of  the  Birthplace  and  the  Tomb, — 

visions  of  Allah's  Holy  Hill.1 

XI 

But  we?     Another  shift  of  scene,  another 

pang  to  rack  the  heart ; 
Why  meet  we  on  the  bridge  of   Time  to 

'change  one  greeting  and  to  part? 


We  meet  to  part ;  yet  asks  my  sprite,  Part 

we  to  meet  ?     Ah  !  is  it  so  ? 
Man  's  fancy-made  Omniscience  knows  who 

made  Omniscience  nought  can  know. 

XIII 

Why  must  we  meet,  why  must  we  part,  why 
must  we  bear  this  yoke  of  MUST, 

Without  our  leave  or  askt  or  given,  by  tyrant 
Fate  on  victim  thrust  ? 


That  Eve  so  gay,  so  bright,  so  glad,  this 
Morn  so  dim,  and  sad,  and  grey; 

Strange  that  life's  Registrar  should  write 
this  day  a  day,  that  day  a  day ! 


Arafat,  near  Mecca. 


THE    KAS?DAH 


Mine  eyes,  my  brain,  my  heart,  are  sad, — 

sad  is  the  very  core  of  me ; 
All  wearies,  changes,  passes,  ends;  alas!  the 

Birthday  's  injury! 

XVI 

Friends  of  my  youth,  a  last  adieu!  haply 

some  day  we  meet  again ; 
Yet  ne'er  the  selfsame  men  shall  meet ;  the 

years  shall  make  us  other  men  : 


The  light  of  morn  has  grown  to  noon,  has 
paled  with  eve,  and  now  farewell ! 

Go,  vanish  from  my  Life  as  dies  the  tinkling 
of  the  Camel's  bell. 


II 


In  these  drear  wastes  of  sea-born  land,  these 
wilds  where  none  may  dwell  but  He, 
What  visionary  Pasts  revive,  what  process 
of  the  Years  we  see : 


Gazing  beyond  the  thin  blue  line  that  rims 

the  far  horizon -ring, 
Our  sadden'd  sight  why  haunt  these  ghosts, 
whence  do  these  spectral  shadows  spring  ? 


What  endless  questions  vex  the  thought,  of 
Whence  and  Whither,  When  and  How  ? 

What  fond  and  foolish  strife  to  read  the 
Scripture  writ  on  human  brow  ; 


IV 


As   stand   we   percht   on    point    of    Time, 

betwixt  the  two  Eternities, 
Whose  awful  secrets  gathering  round  with 

black  profound  oppress  our  eyes. 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  This  gloomy  night,  these  grisly  waves,  these 
winds  and  whirlpools  loud  and  dread  : 

What  reck  they  of  our  wretched  plight  who 
Safety's  shore  so  lightly  tread  ? " 


Thus  quoth  the  Bard  of  Love  and  Wine,1 
whose  dream  of  Heaven  ne'er  could  rise 

Beyond  the  brimming  Kausar-cup  and  Houris 
with  the  white -black  eyes  ; 


Ah  me  1  my  race  of  threescore  years  is  short, 

but  long  enough  to  pall 
My  sense  with  joyless  joys  as  these,  with 

Love  and  Houris,  Wine  and  all. 


Another  boasts  he  would  divorce  old  barren 

Reason  from  his  bed, 
And  wed  the  Vine-maid  in  her  stead  ;  —  fools 

who  believe  a  word  he  said!  2 


And  " '  Dust  thou  art  to  dust  returning,' 
ne'er  was  spoke  of  human  soul " 

The  Soon  cries,  't  is  well  for  him  that  hath 
such  gift  to  ask  its  goal. 

i     Hafiz  of  Shiraz. 

2     Omar-i-Khayyam,  the  tent-maker  poet  of  Persia. 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  And  this  is  all,  for  this  we  're  born  to  weep 

a  little  and  to  die  !  " 
So  sings  the  shallow  bard  whose   life  still 

labours  at  the  letter  "I." 


"  Ear  never  heard,  Eye  never  saw  the  bliss  of 

those  who  enter  in 
My  heavenly  kingdom,"  Isa  said,  who  wailed 

our  sorrows  and  our  sin  : 


Too  much  of  words  or  yet  too  few !     What 

to  thy  Godhead  easier  than 
One   little  glimpse  of   Paradise  to  ope   the 

eyes  and  ears  of  man  ? 


"  I  am  the  Truth  !   I  am  the  Truth  !  "  we  hear 

the  God -drunk  gnostic  cry 
"  The  microcosm    abides    in    ME ;    Eternal 

Allah's  nought  but  I!" 

XIV 

Mansuri  was  wise,  but  wiser  they  who  smote 

him  with  the  hurled  stones ; 
And,  though  his  blood  a  witness  bore,  no 

wisdom-might  could  mend  his  bones. 

i     A  famous  Mystic  stoned  for  blasphemy. 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  Eat,  drink,  and  sport;  the  rest  of  life's  not 
worth  a  fillip,"  quoth  the  King; 

Methinks  the  saying  saith  too  much :  the 
swine  would  say  the  selfsame  thing ! 


Two-footed  beasts  that  browse  through  life, 
by  Death  to  serve  as  soil  design'd, 

Bow  prone  to  Earth  whereof  they  be,  and 
there  the  proper  pleasures  find: 


But  you  of  finer,  nobler  stuff,  ye,  whom  to 

Higher  leads  the  High, 
What  binds  your   hearts  in   common  bond 

with  creatures  of  the  stall  and  sty  ? 


"  In  certain  hope  of  Life -to-come  I  journey 

through  this  shifting  scene  " 
The   Zahid1   snarls   and  saunters  down   his 

Vale  of  Tears  with  confident  mien. 


Wiser  than  Amran's  Sonz  art  thou,  who 
ken'st  so  well  the  world -to -be, 

The  Future  when  the  Past  is  not,  the  Present 
merest  dreamery; 


i     The  "  Philister  "  of  "  respectable  "  belief. 
2     Moses  in  the  Koran. 


THE    KASfDAH 


What  know'st  thou,  man,  of  Life  ?  and  yet, 
for  ever  twixt  the  womb,  the  grave, 

Thou  pratest  of  the  Coming  Life,  of  Heav'n 
and  Hell  thou  fain  must  rave. 


The  world  is  old  and  thou  art  young;  the 
world  is  large  and  thou  art  small ; 

Cease,  atom  of  a  moment's  span,  to  hold 
thyself  an  All-in-All ! 


ii 


Ill 


FIE,   fie!  you   visionary  things,  ye  motes 
that  dance  in  sunny  glow, 
Who  base  and  build  Eternities  on  briefest 
moment  here  below ; 


Who  pass  through  Life.like  caged  birds,  the 

captives  of  a  despot  will ; 
Still  wond'ring  How  and  When  and  Why,  and 

Whence  and  Whither,  wond'ring  still; 


Still  wond'ring  how  the  Marvel  came  because 
two  coupling  mammals  chose 

To  slake  the  thirst  of  fleshly  love,  and  thus 
the  "Immortal  Being"  rose; 


Wond'ring  the  Babe  with  staring  eyes,  per- 
force compel'd  from  night  to  day, 

Gript  in  the  giant  grasp  of  Life  like  gale- 
borne  dust  or  wind-wrung  spray  ; 


THE   KASfDAH 


Who  comes  imbecile  to  the  world  'mid  double 

danger,  groans,  and  tears ; 
The  toy,  the  sport,   the   waif  and   stray  of 

passions,  error,  wrath  and  fears ; 


Who  knows  not  Whence  he  came  nor  Why, 
who  kens  not  Whither  bound  and  When, 

Yet  such  is  Allah's  choicest  gift,  the  blessing 
dreamt  by  foolish  men  ; 


Who  step  by  step  perforce  returns  to  couth- 
less  youth,  wan,  white  and  cold, 

Lisping  again  his  broken  words  till  all  the 
tale  be  fully  told: 

VIII 

Wond'ring  the  Babe  with  quenched  orbs,  an 
oldster  bow'd  by  burthening  years, 

How  'scaped  the  skiff  an  hundred  storms;  how 
'scaped  the  thread  a  thousand  shears  ; 


How  coming  to  the  Feast  unbid,  he  found 

the  gorgeous  table  spread 
With    the    fair-seeming    Sodom-fruit,    with 

stones  that  bear  the  shape  of  bread: 


13 


THE    KASfDAH 


How  Life  was  nought  but  ray  of  sun  that 
clove  the  darkness  thick  and  blind, 

The  ravings  of  the  reckless  storm,  the 
shrieking  of  the  rav'ening  wind  ; 


XI 

How  lovely  visions  'guiled  his  sleep,  aye 
fading  with  the  break  of  morn, 

Till  every  sweet  became  a  sour,  till  every 
rose  became  a  thorn; 


Till  dust  and  ashes  met  his  eyes  wherever 

turned  their  saddened  gaze ; 
The  wrecks  of  joys  and  hopes  and  loves,  the 

rubbish  of  his  wasted  days ; 


How  every  high  heroic  Thought  that  longed 

to  breathe  empyrean  air, 
Failed    of   its   feathers,   fell    to    earth,    and 

perisht  of  a  sheer  despair; 


How,  dower'd  with  heritage  of  brain,  whose 

might  has  split  the  solar  ray, 
His  rest  is  grossest  coarsest  earth,  a  crown 

of  gold  on  brow  of  clay ; 


M 


THE    KAStDAH 


XV 


This  House  whose  frame  be  flesh  and  bone, 
mortar' d  with  blood  and  faced  with  skin, 

The  home  of  sickness,  dolours,  age  ;  unclean 
without,  impure  within  : 


Sans  ray  to  cheer  its  inner  gloom,  the  cham- 
bers haunted  by  the  Ghost, 

Darkness  his  name,  a  cold  dumb  Shade 
stronger  than  all  the  heav'nly  host. 


This  tube,  an  enigmatic  pipe,  whose  end  was 

laid  before  begun, 
That  lengthens,  broadens,  shrinks  and  breaks  ; 

—  puzzle,  machine,  automaton  ; 


The  first  of  Pots  the  Potter  made  by  Chrysor- 

rhoas'  blue-green  wave ; 1 
Methinks  I  see  him  smile  to  see  what  guerdon 

to  the  world  he  gave  ! 


How  Life  is  dim,  unreal,  vain,  like  scenes 
that  round  the  drunkard  reel ; 

How  "  Being  "  meaneth  not  to  be ;  to  see 
and  hear,  smell,  taste  and  feel. 

i     The  Abana,  River  of  Damascus. 

l5 


THE    KAStDAH 


XX 


A  drop  in  Ocean's  boundless  tide,  unfathom'd 

waste  of  agony ; 
Where  millions   live   their   horrid  lives    by 

making  other  millions  die. 


How  with  a  heart  that  would  through  love, 

to  Universal  Love  aspire, 
Man    woos    infernal    chance    to   smite,    as 

Min'arets  draw  the  Thunder-fire. 


How  Earth  on  Earth  builds  tow'er  and  wall, 
to  crumble  at  a  touch  of  Time ; 

How  Earth  on  Earth  from  Shinar -plain  the 
heights  of  Heaven  fain  would  climb. 

XXIII 

How  short  this  Life,  how  long  withal;  how 
false  its  weal,  how  true  its  woes, 

This  fever-fit  with  paroxysms  to  mark  its 
opening  and  its  close. 


Ah !  gay  the  day  with  shine  of  sun,  and  bright 
the  breeze,  and  blithe  the  throng 

Met  on  the  River -bank  to  play,  when  I  was 
young,  when  I  was  young: 


16 


THE   KASfDAH 


Such  general  joy  could  never  fade;  and  yet 

the  chilling  whisper  came 
One  face  had  paled,  one  form  had  failed ;  had 

fled  the  bank,  had  swum  the  stream ; 


Still  revellers  danced,  and  sang,  and  trod  the 
hither  bank  of  Time's  deep  tide, 

Still  one  by  one  they  left  and  fared  to  the 
far  misty  thither  side ; 


And  now  the  last  hath  slipt  away  yon  drear 

Death -desert  to  explore, 
And  now  one  Pilgrim  worn  and  lorn  still 

lingers  on  the  lonely  shore. 


Yes,  Life  in  youth -tide  standeth  still;  in 
Manhood  streameth  soft  and  slow ; 

See,  as  it  nears  the  'abysmal  goal  how  fleet 
the  waters  flash  and  flow ! 

XXIX 

And  Deaths  are  twain ;  the  Deaths  we  see 
drop  like  the  leaves  in  windy  Fall; 

But  ours,  our  own,  are  ruined  worlds,  a  globe 
collapst,  last  end  of  all. 


l7 


THE    KASIDAH 


We  live  our  lives  with  rogues  and  fools, 
dead  and  alive,  alive  and  dead, 

We  die  'twixt  one  who  feels  the  pulse  and 
one  who  frets  and  clouds  the  head : 

XXXI 

And,  —  oh,   the    Pity! — hardly  conned  the 

lesson  comes  its  fatal  term  ; 
Fate  bids  us  bundle  up  our  books,  and  bear 

them  bod'ily  to  the  worm : 


Hardly  we  learn  to  wield  the  blade  before 
the  wrist  grows  stiff  and  old ; 

Hardly  we  learn  to  ply  the  pen  ere  Thought 
and  Fancy  faint  with  cold: 

xxxm 

Hardly  we  find  the  path  of  love,  to  sink  the 

Self,  forget  the  "  I," 
When  sad  suspicion  grips  the  heart,  when 

Man,  the  Man  begins  to  die: 


Hardly  we  scale  the  wisdom-heights,  and 
sight  the  Pisgah-scene  around, 

And  breathe  the  breath  of  heav'enly  air,  and 
hear  the  Spheres'  harmonious  sound  ; 


iS 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXXV 


When  swift  the  Camel -rider  spans  the  howl- 
ing waste,  by  Kismet  sj>ed, 

And  of  his  Magic  Wand  a  wave  hurries  the 
quick  to  join  the  dead.1 

xxxvi 

How  sore  the   burden,  strange   the   strife ; 

how  full  of  splendour,  wonder,  fear; 
Life,    atom    of    that    Infinite    Space    that 

stretcheth  'twixt  the  Here  and  There. 


How  Thought  is  imp'otent  to  divine  the 
secret  which  the  gods  defend, 

The  Why  of  birth  and  life  and  death,  that 
Isis-veil  no  hand  may  rend. 

XXXVIII 

Eternal  Morrows  make  our  Day ;  our  Is  is 

aye  to  be  till  when 
Night  closes  in  ;  't  is  all  a  dream,  and  yet  we 

die,  — and  then  and  THEN? 

xxxix 

And  still  the  Weaver  plies  his  loom,  whose 
warp  and  woof  is  wretched  Man 

Weaving  th'  unpattern'd  dark  design,  so  dark 
we  doubt  it  owns  a  plan. 

i  Death  in  Arabia  rides  a  Camel,  not  a  pale  horse. 

T9 


THE    KASfDAH 


XL 


Dost  not,  0  Maker,  blush  to  hear,  amid  the 

storm  of  tears  and  blood, 
Man  say  Thy  mercy  made  what  is,  and  saw 

the  made  and  said  't  was  good  ? 

XLI 

The  marvel  is  that  man  can  smile  dreaming 
his  ghostly  ghastly  dream;  — 

Better  the  heedless  atomy  that  buzzes  in  the 
morning  beam ! 

XLII 

O  the  dread  pathos  of  our  lives  I  how  durst 

thou,  Allah,  thus  to  play 
With  Love,  Affection,  Friendship,  all  that 

shows  the  god  in  mortal  clay  ? 

XLIII 

But  ah  !  what  'vaileth  man  to  mourn ;  shall 
tears  bring  forth  what  smiles  ne'er 
brought ; 

Shall  brooding  breed  a  thought  of  joy?  Ah 
hush  the  sigh,  forget  the  thought! 


Silence  thine  immemorial  quest,  contain  thy 

nature's  vain  complaint 
None  heeds,  none  cares  for  thee  or  thine;  — 

like  thee  how  many  came  and  went? 


THE    KASfDAH 


XLV 


Cease,   Man,  to  mourn,  to  weep,  to  wail; 

enjoy  thy  shining  hour  of  sun ; 
We  dance  along  Death's  icy  brink,  but  is  the 

dance  less  full  of  fun  ? 


21 


IV 


What  Truths  hath  gleaned  that  Sage 
consumed  by  many  a  moon  that  waxt 
and  waned  ? 
What  Prophet -strain  be  his  to  sing?     What 
hath  his  old  Experience  gained  ? 


There  is  no  God,  no  man-made  God;  a 
bigger,  stronger,  crueller  man  ; 

Black  phantom  of  our  baby-fears,  ere 
Thought,  the  life  of  Life,  began. 


Right  quoth  the  Hindu  Prince  of  old,1  "An 

Ishwara  for  one  I  nill, 
Th'  almighty  everlasting  Good  who  cannot 

'bate  th'  Eternal  111 :  " 


'  Your  gods  may  be,  what  shows  they  are  ? " 
Hear  China's  Perfect  Sage  declare;2 

'And  being,  what  to  us  be  they  who  dwell 
so  darkly  and  so  far  ? " 

i  Buddha. 
2  Confucius. 


THE   KASfDAH 


"All  matter  hath  a  birth  and  death;  'tis 
made,  unmade  and  made  anew  ; 

"  We  choose  to  call  the  Maker  '  God  : '  — 
such  is  the  Zahid's  owly  view. 

VI 

"You  changeful  finite  Creatures  strain" 
(rejoins  the  Drawer  of  the  Wine) 1 

"The  dizzy  depths  of  Infinite  Power  to 
fathom  with  your  foot  of  twine  ;  " 


Poor  idols  of  man's  heart  and  head  with 

the  Divine  Idea  to  blend; 
To  preach  as  '  Nature's  Common  Course ' 

what  any  hour  may  shift  or  end." 


"  How  shall  the  Shown  pretend  to  ken  aught 
of  the  Showman  or  the  Show  ? 

"  Why  meanly  bargain  to  believe,  which  only 
means  thou  ne'er  canst  know  ? 

IX 

"How  may  the  passing  Now  contain  the 
standing  Now  —  Eternity?  — 

"An  endless  is  without  a  was,  the  be  and 
never  the  to-be  ? 

i  The  Soofi  or  Gnostic  opposed  to  the  Zahid. 
23 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  Who  made  your  Maker  ?  If  Self-made, 
why  fare  so  far  to  fare  the  worse 

"  Sufficeth  not  a  world  of  worlds,  a  self-made 
chain  of  universe  ? 


XI 

"  Grant  an  Idea,  Primal  Cause,  the  Causing 

Cause,  why  crave  fox  more  ? 
"  Why  strive  its  depth  and  breadth  to  mete, 

to  trace  its  work,  its  aid  to  'implore  ? 

XII 

"  Unknown,  Incomprehensible,  whate'er  you 

choose  to  call  it,  call ; 
"  But  leave  it  vague  as  airy  space,  dark  in 

its  darkness  mystical. 


"  Your  childish  fears  would  seek  a  Sire,  by 

the  non-human  God  defin'd, 
"What   your  five  wits  may  wot  ye  weet; 

what  is  you  please  to  dub  '  design'd ; ' 


"  You  bring  down  Heav'en  to  vulgar  Earth ; 

your  Maker  like  yourselves  you  make, 
"You  quake  to   own  a  reign   of  Law,  you 

pray  the  Law  its  laws  to  break ; 


^4 


THE    KASfDAH 


You  pray,  but  hath  your  thought  e'er  weighed 
how  empty  vain  the  prayer  must  be, 

That  begs  a  boon  already  giv'en,  or  craves 
a  change  of  Law  to  see  ? 


"  Say,  Man,  deep  learned  in  the  Scheme  that 

orders  mysteries  sublime, 
"  How  came  it  this  was  Jesus,  that  was  Judas 

from  the  birth  of  Time  ? 


"  How  I  the  tiger,  thou  the  lamb ;  again  the 

Secret,  prithee,  show 
"  Who  slew   the   slain,   bowman  or  bolt  or 

Fate  that  drave  the  man,  the  bow  ? 


"  Man  worships  self :  his  God  is  Man ;  the 
struggling  of  the  mortal  mind 

"  To  form  its  model  as 't  would  be,  the  perfect 
of  itself  to  find. 


"  The  God  became  sage,  priest  and  scribe 
where  Nilus'  serpent  made  the  vale ; 

"A  gloomy  Brahm  in  glowing  Ind,  a  neutral 
something  cold  and  pale  : 


25 


THE   KAStDAH 


XX 


"Amid  the  high  Chaldean  hills  a  moulder  of 

the  heavenly  spheres; 
"  On  Guebre  steppes  the  Timeless -God  who 

governs  by  his  dual  peers : 

XXI 

"  In  Hebrew  tents  the  Lord  that  led  His 
leprous  slaves  to  fight  and  jar; 

'*  Yahveh,1  Adon  or  Elohim,  the  God  that 
smites,  the  Man  of  War. 


"  The  lovely  Gods  of  lib'ertine  Greece,  those 

fair  and  frail  humanities 
"  Whose  homes  o'erlook'd  the  Middle  Sea, 

where  all  Earth's  beauty  cradled  lies, 


"Ne'er  left  its  blessed  bounds,  nor  sought 
the  barb'arous  climes  of  barb'arous  gods 

"  Where  Odin  of  the  dreary  North  o'er  hog 
and  sickly  mead-cup  nods  : 


"And  when,  at  length,  '  Great  Pan  is  dead 
uprose  the  loud  and  dol'orous  cry 

"A  glamour  wither'd  on  the  ground,  £ 
splendour  faded  in  the  sky. 


i  Jehovah. 

26 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXV 


Yea,  Pan  was  dead,  the  Nazar'ene  came 
and  seized  his  seat  beneath  the  sun, 

The  votary  of  the  Riddle -god,  whose  one 
is  three  and  three  is  one ; 

XXVI 

Whose  sadd'ening  creed  of  herited  Sin 
spilt  o'er  the  world  its  cold  grey  spell ; 

In  every  vista  showed  a  grave,  and  'neath 
the  grave  the  glare  of  Hell; 


Till  all  Life's  Po'esy  sinks  to  prose  ;  romance 

to  dull  Real'ity  fades  ; 
"  Earth's  flush   of  gladness  pales  in  gloom 

and  God  again  to  man  degrades. 

XXVIII 

"Then  the  lank  Arab  foul  with  sweat,  the 

drainer  of  the  camel's  dug, 
"  Gorged  with  his  leek-green  lizard's  meat, 

clad  in  his  filthy  rag  and  rug, 

XXIX 

"  Bore  his  fierce  Allah   o'er  his  sands  and 

broke,  like  lava-burst  upon 
"The    realms    where    reigned    pre-Adamite 

Kings,  where  rose  the  Grand  Kayanian 

throne.1 


i    Kayani —  of  the  race  of  Cyrus  :  old  Guebre  heroes. 
27 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXX 


"  Who  now  of  ancient  Kayomurs,  of  Zal  or 

Rustam  cares  to  sing, 
"  Whelmed  by  the  tempest  of  the  tribes  that 

called  the  Camel-driver  King  ? 


"Where  are  the  crown  of   Kay   Khusraw, 

the  sceptre  of  Anushirwan 
"  The  holy  grail  of  high  Jamshid,  Afrasiyab's 

hall  ?  —  Canst  tell  me,  man  ? 

XXXII 

"  Gone,  gone,  where  I  and  thou  must  go, 
borne  by  the  winnowing  wings  of  Death, 

"  The  Horror  brooding  over  life,  and  nearer 
brought  with  every  breath  : 


Their  fame  hath  filled  the  SevenClimes,  they 
rose  and  reigned,  they  fought  and  fell, 

1  As  swells  and  swoons  across  the  wold  the 
tinkling  of  the  Camel's  bell. 


28 


There   is   no    Good,   there   is   no   Bad ; 
these  be  the  whims  of  mortal  will : 
What   works    me  weal  that  call  I   '  good,' 
what  harms  and  hurts  I  hold  as  '  ill : ' 


They  change  with  place,  they  shift  with 
race ;  and,  in  the  veriest  span  of  Time, 

Each  Vice  has  worn  a  Virtue's  crown ;  all 
Good  was  banned  as  Sin  or  Crime : 


Like  ravelled  skeins  they  cross  and  twine, 
while  this  with  that  connects  and  blends  ; 

And  only  Khizr1  his  eye  shall  see  where  one 
begins,  where  other  ends  : 


What  mortal  shall  consort  with  Khizr,  when 

Musa  turned  in  fear  to  flee  ? 
What  man  foresees  the  flow'er  or  fruit  whom 

Fate  compels  to  plant  the  tree  ? 


i     Supposed  to  be  the  Prophet  Elijah. 
29 


THE    KASfDAH 


For  Man's  Free-will  immortal  Law,  Anagke, 

Kismet,  Des'tiny  read 
That  was,   that   is,  that  aye  shall  be,  Star, 

Fortune,  Fate,  Urd,  Norn  or  Need. 

VI 

"  Man's  nat'ural  State  is  God's  design  ;  " 
such  is  the  silly  sage's  theme ; 

"  Man's  primal  Age  was  Age  of  Gold ; " 
such  is  the  Poet's  waking  dream: 


Delusion,  Ign'orance  !  Long  ere  Man  drew 
upon  Earth  his  earli'est  breath 

The  world  was  one  contin'uous  scene  of 
anguish,  torture,  prey  and  Death  ; 


Where  hideous  Theria  of  the   wild  rended 

their  fellows  limb  by  limb  ; 
Where  horrid  Saurians  of  the  sea  in  waves 

of  blood  were  wont  to  swim  : 


The  "fair  young  Earth"  was  only  fit  to 
spawn  her  frightful  monster-brood; 

Now  fiery  hot,  now  icy  frore,  now  reeking 
wet  with  steamy  flood. 


30 


THE    KASfDAH 


Yon  glorious  Sun,  the  greater  light,  the 
"  Bridegroom  "  of  the  royal  Lyre, 

A  flaming,  boiling,  bursting  mine;  a  grim 
black  orb  of  whirling  fire : 

XI 

That  gentle  Moon,  the  lesser  light,  the 
Lover's  lamp,  the  Swain's  delight, 

A  ruined  world,  a  globe  burnt  out,  a  corpse 
upon  the  road  of  night. 

XII 

What  reckt  he,  say,  of  Good  or  111  who  in 

the  hill-hole  made  his  lair, 
The    blood -fed    rav'ening   Beast    of    prey, 

wilder  than  wildest  wolf  or  bear  ? 


How  long  in  Man's  pre-Ad'amite  days  to 
feed  and  swill,  to  sleep  and  breed, 

Were  the  brute -biped's  only  life,  a  perfect 
life  sans  Code  or  Creed  ? 


His  choicest  garb  a  shaggy  fell,  his  choicest 

tool  a  flake  of  stone  ; 
His  best  of  orn'aments  tattoo'd  skin  and 

holes  to  hang  his  bits  of  bone; 


31 


THE    KASfDAH 


Who  fought  for  female  as  for  food  when 
Mays  awoke  to  warm  desire ; 

And  such  the  Lust  that  grew  to  Love  when 
Fancy  lent  a  purer  fire. 

XVI 

Where  then  "  Th'  Eternal  nature-law  by  God 

engraved  on  human  heart  ?  " 
Behold  his  simiad  sconce  and  own  the  Thing 

could  play  no  higher  part. 

XVII 

Yet,  as  long  ages  rolled,  he  learnt  from 
Beaver,  Ape  and  Ant  to  build 

Shelter  for  sire  and  dam  and  brood,  from 
blast  and  blaze  that  hurt  and  killed ; 


And  last  came  Fire ;  when  scrap  of  stone 
cast  on  the  flame  that  lit  his  den, 

Gave  out  the  shining  ore,  and  made  the 
Lord  of  beasts  a  Lord  of  men. 

XIX 

The  "  moral  sense,"  your  Zahid-phrase,  is 

but  the  gift  of  latest  years ; 
Conscience  was  born  when  man   had  shed 

his  fur,  his  tail,  his  pointed  ears. 


y- 


THE    KASIDAH 


What  conscience  has  the  murd'erous  Moor, 
who  slays  his  guest  with  felon  blow, 

Save  sorrow  he  can  slay  no  more,  what 
prick  of  pen'itence  can  he  know  ? 


You  cry  the  "  Cruelty  of  Things  "  is  myst'ery 
to  your  purblind  eye, 

Which  fixed  upon  a  point  in  space  the  gen- 
eral project  passes  by: 


For  see !  the  Mammoth  went  his  ways, 
became  a  mem'ory  and  a  name ; 

While  the  half-reasoner  with  the  hand1 
survives  his  rank  and  place  to  claim. 


Earthquake  and  plague,  storm,  fight  and  fray, 
portents  and  curses  man  must  deem 

Since  he  regards  his  self  alone,  nor  cares  to 
trace  the  scope,  the  scheme  ; 

XXIV 

The  Quake  that  comes  in  eyelid's  beat  to 

ruin,  level,  'gulf  and  kill, 
Builds  up  a  world  for  better  use,  to  general 

Good  bends  special  111: 

i     The  Elephant. 
33 


THE    KASfDAH 


The  dreadest  sound  man's  ear  can  hear,  the 
war  and  rush  of  stormy  Wind 

Depures  the  stuff  of  human  life,  breeds 
health  and  strength  for  humankind: 


What  call  ye  them  or  Goods  or  Ills,  ill-  goods, 

good-ills,  a  loss,  a  gain, 
When  realms  arise  and  falls  a  roof ;  a  world 

is  won,  a  man  is  slain  ? 


And  thus  the  race  of  Being  runs,  till  haply  in 

the  time  to  be 
Earth    shifts    her  pole    and    Mushtari-Imen 

another  falling  star  shall  see  : 


Shall  see  it  fall  and  fade  from  sight,  whence 
come,  where  gone  no  Thought  can  tell, — 

Drink  of  yon  mirage  stream  and  chase  the 
tinkling  of  the  camel -bell ! 


The  Planet  Jupiter. 


34 


VI 


AU^Faith  is  false,  all  Faith  is  true  :  Truth 
is  the  shattered  mirror  strown 
In  myriad  bits ;  while  each  believes  his  little 
bit  the  whole  to  own. 


What  is  the  Truth  ?  was  askt  of  yore.    Reply 

all  object  Truth  is  one 
As  twain  of  halves  aye  makes  a  whole ;  the 

moral  Truth  for  all  is  none. 

ill 

Ye  scantly -learned  Zahids  learn  from  Aflatun 

and  Aristu,1 
While    Truth   is    real    like    your  good:    th' 

Untrue,  like  ill,  is  real  too ; 

IV 

| 
As  palace  mirror'd  in  the  stream,  as  vapour 

mingled  with  the  skies, 
So  weaves   the    brain   of   mortal   man    the 

tangled  web  of  Truth  and  Lies. 

I  Plato  and  Aristotle . 

35 


THE    KASfDAH 


What  see  we  here  ?     Forms,  nothing  more ! 

Forms  fill  the  brightest  strongest  eye, 
We   know  not  substance ;   'mid  the  shades 

shadows  ourselves  we  live  and  die. 


VI 

"Faith  mountains  move"  I  hear:  I  see  the 

practice  of  the  world  unheed 
The   foolish   vaunt,   the  blatant  boast   that 

serves  our  vanity  to  feed. 

VII 

"  Faith  stands  unmoved  ;  "  and  why  ?  Be- 
cause man's  silly  fancies  still  remain, 

And  will  remain  till  wiser  man  the  day-dreams 
of  his  youth  disdain. 


"'T  is  blessed  to  believe;"   you  say:    The 

saying  may  be  true  enow 
An  it  can  add  to  Life  a  light:  —  only  remains 

to  show  us  how. 

IX 

E'en  if  I  could  I  nould  believe  your  tales 

and  fables  stale  and  trite, 
Irksome   as   twice-sung   tune  that  tires  the 

dulled  ear  of  drowsy  wight. 


36 


THE    KASfDAH 


With  God's  foreknowledge  man's  free  will ! 

what  monster-growth  of  human  brain, 
What  pow'ers  of  light  shall  ever  pierce  this 

puzzle  dense  with  words  inane  ? 

XI 

Vainly  the  heart  on  Providence  calls,  such 

aid  to  seek  were  hardly  wise 
For  man   must   own   the  pitiless    Law   that 

sways  the  globe  and  sevenfold  skies. 


"Be  ye  Good  Boys,  go  seek  for  Heav'en, 
come  pay  the  priest  that  holds  the  key  ;  " 

So  spake,  and  speaks,  and  aye  shall  speak 
the  last  to  enter  Heaven, — he. 

XIII 

Are  these  the  words  for  men  to  hear  ?  yet 
such  the  Church's  general  tongue, 

The  horseleech-cry  so  strong  so  high  her 
heav'enward  Psalms  and  Hymns  among. 


What  ?  Faith  a  merit  and  a  claim,  when 
with  the  brain  't  is  born  and  bred  ? 

Go,  fool,  thy  foolish  way  and  dip  in  holy 
water  buried  dead ! 


37 


THE    KASfDAH 


XV 


Yet  follow  not  th'  unwisdom-path,  cleave 
not  to  this  and  that  disclaim; 

Believe  in  all  that  man  believes;  here  all 
and  naught  are  both  the  same. 


But  is  it  so  ?     How  may  we  know  ?     Haply 

this  Fate,  this  Law  may  be 
A   word,  a  sound,   a  breath ;    at    most    the 

Zahid's  moonstruck  theory. 


Yes  Truth  may  be,  but  't  is  not  Here;  man- 
kind must  seek  and  find  it  There, 

But  Where  nor  I xiox you  can  tell,  nor  aught 
earth-mother  ever  bare. 

XVIII 

Enough  to  think  that  Truth  can  be :  come 

sit  we  where  the  roses  glow, 
Indeed    he    knows    not  how   to  know  who 

knows  not  also  how  to  'unknow. 


38 


VII 


Man  hath  no  Soul,  a  state  of  things,  a 
no -thing  still,  a  sound,  a  word 
Which  so  begets  substantial  thing  that  eye 
shall  see  what  ear  hath  heard. 


Where  was  his  Soul  the  savage  beast  which 

in  primeval  forests  strayed, 
What   shape    had   it,   what   dwelling-place, 

what  part  in  nature's  plan  it  played  ? 


This  Soul  to  ree  a  riddle  made ;  who  wants 

the  vain  duality  ? 
Is  not  myself  enough  for  me  ?  what  need  of 

"I"  within  an  "I"? 


Words,  words  that  gender  things !  The 
soul  is  a  new-comer  on  the  scene  ; 

Sufficeth  not  the  breath  of  Life  to  work  the 
matter-born  machine  ? 


39 


THE    KASfDAH 


We  know  the  Gen'esis  of  the  Soul ;  we  trace 

the  Soul  to  hour  of  birth  ; 
We   mark  its  growth   as  grew  mankind  to 

boast  himself  sole  Lord  of  Earth : 

VI 

The  race  of  Be'ing  from  dawn  of  Life  in  an 

unbroken  course  was  run  ; 
What  men  are  pleased  to  call  their  Souls 

was  in  the  hog  and  dog  begun  : 


Life  is  a  ladder  infinite -stepped,  that  hides 

its  rungs  from  human  eyes  ; 
Planted   its  foot  in   chaos-gloom,   its  head 

soars  high  above  the  skies  : 


No    break    the    chain    of    Being   bears;    all 

things  began  in  unity ; 
And   lie    the   links   in    regular   line   though 

haply  none  the  sequence  see. 

IX 

The    Ghost,    embodied    natural    Dread   of 

dreary  death  and  foul  decay, 
Begat    the    Spirit,    Soul    and    Shade    with 

Hades'  pale  and  wan  array. 


40 


THE    KASfDAH 


X 


The  Soul  required  a  greater  Soul,  a  Soul  of 

Souls,  to  rule  the  host; 
Hence    spirit  powers    and    hierarchies,    all 

gendered  by  the  savage  Ghost. 


XI 

Not  yours,  ye  Peoples  of  the   Book,  these 

fairy  visions  fair  and  fond, 
Got  by  the  gods  of  Khemi-land  l  and  faring 

far  the  seas  beyond  ! 

XII 

"  Th'  immortal  mind  of  mortal  man  ! "  we 
hear  yon  loud-lunged  Zealot  cry  ; 

Whose  mind  but  means  his  sum  of  thought, 
an  essence  of  atomic  "  I." 


Thought  is  the  work  of  brain  and  nerve,  in 
small -skulled  idiot  poor  and  mean; 

In  sickness  sick,  in  sleep  asleep,  and  dead 
when  Death  lets  drop  the  scene. 

XIV 

"Tush  I"  quoth  the  Zahid,  "well  we  ken 
the  teaching  of  the  school  abhorr'd 

"  That  maketh  man  automaton,  mind  a 
secretion,  soul  a  word. 

i  Egypt ;  Kam,  Kem,  Khem  (hierogl.),  in  the  Dem- 
otic Khemi. 


41 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  Of  molecules  and  protoplasm  you  matter- 
mongers  prompt  to  prate; 

"Of  jelly -speck,  development  and  apes  that 
grew  to  man's  estate." 

XVI 

Vain  cavil !  all  that  is  hath  come  either  by 

Mir'acle  or  by  Law  ;  — 
Why  waste  on  this  your  hate  and  fear,  why 

waste  on  that  your  love  and  awe  ? 


Why    heap   such    hatred   on    a   word,   why 

"  Prototype"  to  type  assign, 
Why   upon    matter   spirit    mass  ?   wants    an 

appendix  your  design  ? 


Is  not  the  highest  honour  his  who  from  the 

worst  hath  drawn  the  best; 
May  not  your  Maker  make  the  world  from 

matter,  an  it  suit  His  hest  ? 


Nay  more,  the  sordider  the  stuff  the  cun- 

ninger  the  workman's  hand  : 
Cease,  then,  your  own  Almighty  Power  to 

bind,  to  bound,  to  understand. 


THE    KASfDAH 


"  Reason  and  Instinct!"  How  we  love  to 
play  with  words  that  please  our  pride  ; 

Our  noble  race's  mean  descent  by  false 
forged  titles  seek  to  hide ! 

XXI 

For  "gift  divine  "  I  bid  you  read  the  better 

work  of  higher  brain, 
From  Instinct  differing  in  degree  as  golden 

mine  from  leaden  vein. 

XXII 

Reason    is    Life's    sole   arbiter,    the    magic 

Laby'rinth's  single  clue: 
Worlds    lie    above,   beyond  its   ken ;  what 

crosses  it  can  ne'er  be  true. 

XXIII 

"  Fools  rush  where  Angels  fear  to  tread  ! " 
Angels  and  Fools  have  equal  claim 

To  do  what  Nature  bids  them  do,  sans  hope 
of  praise,  sans  fear  of  blame  ! 


43 


VIII 


There  is  no  Heav'en,  there  is  no  Hell ; 
these  be  the  dreams  of  baby  minds ; 
Tools  of  the  wily  Fetisheer,  to  'fright  the 
fools  his  cunning  blinds. 


Learn  from  the  mighty  Spi'rits  of  old  to  set 
thy  foot  on  Heav'en  and  Hell ; 

In  Life  to  find  thy  hell  and  heav'en  as  thou 
abuse  or  use  it  well. 


Hi 


So  deemed  the  doughty  Jew  who  dared  by 

studied  silence  low  to  lay 
Orcus    and    Hades,    lands    of    shades,    the 

gloomy  night  of  human  day. 


Hard  to  the  heart  is  final  death  :  fain  would 

an  Ens  not  end  in  Nil ; 
Love  made  the  senti'ment  kindly  good :  the 

Priest  perverted  all  to  ill. 


44 


THE    KASfDAH 


While  Reason  sternly  bids  us  die,  Love 
longs  for  life  beyond  the  grave  : 

Our  hearts,  affections,  hopes  and  fears  for 
Life-to-be  shall  ever  crave. 


VI 

Hence  came  the  despot's  darling  dream,  a 
Church  to  rule  and  sway  the  State  ; 

Hence  sprang  the  train  of  countless  griefs  in 
priestly  sway  and  rule  innate. 


For    future    Life    who    dares    reply  ?     No 

witness  at  the  bar  have  we ; 
Save  what  the  brother  Potsherd  tells,  —  old 

tales  and  novel  jugglery. 


Who  e'er  return'd  to  teach  the  Truth,  the 
things  of  Heaven  and  Hell  to  limn  ? 

And  all  we  hear  is  only  fit  for  grandam-talk 
and  nursery-hymn. 

IX 

"  Have  mercy,  man  !  "  the  Zahid  cries,  "  of 

our  best  visions  rob  us  not ! 
"  Mankind  a  future  life  must  have  to  balance 

life's  unequal  lot. 

45 


THE   KASlDAH 


"  Nay,"  quoth  the  Magian  "  't  is  not  so ;  I 
draw  my  wine  for  one  and  all, 

A  cup  for  this,  a  score  for  that,  e'en  as  his 
measure's  great  or  small: 

XI 

"Who  drinks  one  bowl  hath  scant  delight; 

to  poorest  passion  he  was  born ; 
"  Who  drains  the  score  must  e'er  expect  to 

rue  the  headache  of  the  morn." 


Safely  he  jogs  along  the  way  which  '  Golden 

Mean  '  the  sages  call ; 
Who  scales  the  brow  of  frowning  Alp  must 

face  full  many  a  slip  and  fall. 

XIII 

Here  extremes  meet,  anointed  Kings  whose 

crowned  heads  uneasy  lie, 
Whose  cup  of  joy  contains   no  more   than 

tramps  that  on  the  dunghill  die. 


To  fate-doomed  Sinner  born  and  bred  for 
dangling  from  the  gallows-tree; 

To  Saint  who  spends  his  holy  days  in 
rapt'urous  hope  his  God  to  see  ; 


46 


THE    KASfDAH 


To  all  that  breathe  our  upper  air  the  hands 

of  Dest'iny  ever  deal, 
In  fixed  and  equal  parts,  their  shares  of  joy 

and  sorrow,  woe  and  weal. 


"  How  comes  it,  then,  our  span  of  days  in 
hunting  wealth  and  fame  we  spend 

"  Why  strive  we  (and  all  humans  strive)  for 
vain  and  visionary  end  ?  " 


Reply  ;  mankind  obeys  a  law  that  bids  him 

labour,  struggle,  strain; 
The   Sage  well    knowing  its    unworth,    the 

Fool  a-dreaming  foolish  gain. 

XVIII 

And  who,  'mid  e'en  the  Fools,  but  feels  that 

half  the  joy  is  in  the  race 
For  wealth  and  fame  and  place,  nor  sighs 

when  comes  success  to  crown  the  chase  ? 


Again :     In    Hind,  Chin,  Franguestan   that 

accident  of  birth  befell, 
Without    our   choice,    our   will,  our  voice : 

Faith  is  an  accident  as  well. 


47 


THE    KASfDAH 


XX 


What  to  the  Hindu  saith  the  Frank  :  "  Denier 

of  the  Laws  divine  I 
However  godly-good  thy   Life,  Hell   is  the 

home  for  thee  and  thine." 


Go  strain  the  draught  before  'tis  drunk, 
and  learn  that  breathing  every  breath, 

With  every  step,  with  every  gest,  some 
thing  of  life  thou  do'est  to  death." 


Replies  the  Hindu :  "  Wend  thy  way  for 
foul  and  foolish  Mlenchhas  fit ; 

"Your  Pariah -par'adise  woo  and  win;  at 
such  dog-Heav'en  I  laugh  and  spit. 

XXIII 

"  Cannibals  of  the  Holy  Cow  !  who  make 
your  rav'ening  maws  the  grave 

"  Of  Things  with  self-same  right  to  live  ;  — 
what  Fiend  the  filthy  license  gave  ? " 


What  to  the  Moslem  cries  the  Frank  ?  "A 
polygamic  Theist  thou ! 

"  From  an  impostor-Prophet  turn  ;  thy  stub- 
born head  to  Jesus  bow." 


48 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXV 


Rejoins  the  Moslem  :  M  Allah  's  one  tho'  with 

four  Moslemahs  I  wive, 
"  One  -wife  -men  ye  and  (damned  race!)  you 

split  your  God  to  Three  and  Five." 


The  Buddhist  to  Confucians  thus :  "  Like 
dogs  ye  live,  like  dogs  ye  die ; 

"  Content  ye  rest  with  wretched  earth ;  God, 
Judgment,  Hell  ye  fain  defy." 

XXVII 

Retorts  the  Tartar:  "  Shall  I  lend  mine  only 

ready -money  •  now,' 
For     vain     usurious      '  Then '    like     thine, 

avaunt,  a  triple  idiot  Thou  !  " 


"  With  this  poor  life,  with  this  mean  world 
I  fain  complete  what  in  me  lies ; 

I  strive  to  perfect  this  my  me;  my  sole 
ambition  's  to  be  wise." 


When  doctors  differ  who  decides  amid  the 

milliard-headed  throng  ? 
Who  save  the  madman  dares  to  cry :  "  '  T  is 

I  am  right,  you  all  are  wrong  ? " 


49 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXX 


"  You  all  are  right,  you  all  are  wrong,"  we 

hear  the  careless  Soofi  say, 
"  For  each  believes  his  glimm'ering  lamp  to 

be  the  gorgeous  light  of  day." 

XXXI 

"  Thy  faith  why  false,  my  faith  why  true  ? 

't  is  all  the  work  of  Thine  and  Mine, 
"  The  fond   and   foolish   love  of   self   that 

makes  the  Mine  excel  the  Thine." 


Cease  then  to  mumble  rotten  bones ;  and 
strive  to  clothe  with  flesh  and  blood 

The  skel'eton  ;  and  to  shape  a  Form  that  all 
shall  hail  as  fair  and  good. 

XXXIII 

"  For  gen'erous  youth,"  an  Arab  saith, 
"  Jahim  's1  the  only  genial  state  ; 

"  Give  us  the  fire  but  not  the  shame  with 
the  sad,  sorry  blest  to  mate." 


And  if  your  Heav'en  and  Hell  be  true,  and 
Fate  that  forced  me  to  be  born 

Force  me  to  Heav'en  or  Hell  —  I  go,  and 
hold  Fate's  insolence  in  scorn. 

i  Jehannum,  Gehenna,  Hell. 

50 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXXV 


I  want  not  this,  I  want  not  that,  already  sick 

of  Me  and  Thee; 
And  if  we  '  re  both  transform'd  and  changed, 

what  then  becomes  of  Thee  and  Me  ? 


Enough  to  think  such  things  may  be  :  to  say 

they  are  not  or  they  are 
Were  folly :  leave  them  all  to  Fate,  nor  wage 

on  shadows  useless  war. 

XXXVII 

Do'what  thy  manhood  bids  thee  do,  from 
none  but  self  expect  applause ; 

He  noblest  lives  and  noblest  dies  who  makes 
and  keeps  his  self-made  laws. 

XXXVIII 

All  other  Life  is  living  Death,  a  world  where 

none  but  Phantoms  dwell, 
A  breath,  a  wind,  a  sound,  a  voice,  a  tinkling 

of  the  camel -bell. 


5i 


IX 


How   then   shall   man  so  order  life  that 
when  his  tale  of  years  is  told, 
Like  sated  guest    he   wend    his  way;    how 
shall  his  even  tenour  hold  ? 


Despite    the    Writ    that    stores    the    skull ; 

despite  the  Table  and  the  Pen  ;  • 
Maugre  the  Fate   that   plays   us   down,  her 

board  the  world,  her  pieces  men  ? 


How  when  the  light  and  glow  of  life  wax 
dim  in  thickly  gath'ering  gloom, 

Shall  mortal  scoff  at  sting  of  Death,  shall 
scorn  the  victory  of  the  Tomb  ? 


IV 


One   way,  two   paths,   one  end  the   grave. 

This  runs  athwart  the  flow'ery  plain, 
That  breasts  the  bush,  the  steep,  the  crag, 

in  sun  and  wind  and  snow  and  rain : 


Emblems  of  Kismet,  or  Destiny. 

52 


THE    KASfDAH 


Who  treads  the  first  must  look  adown,  must 

deem  his  life  an  all  in  all; 
Must  see  no  heights  where  man  may  rise,  must 

sight  no  depths  where  man  may  fall. 

VI 

Allah  in  Adam  form  must  view;  adore  the 

Maker  in  the  made 
Content  to  bask  in  Maya's  smile,1  in  joys  of 

pain,  in  lights  of  shade. 


He  breaks  the  Law,  he  burns  the  Book,  he 
sends  the  Moolah  back  to  school ; 

Laughs  at  the  beards  of  Saintly  men ;  and 
dubs  the  Prophet  dolt  and  fool, 

VIII 

Embraces  Cypress'  taper -waist ;  cools  feet  on 

wavy  breast  of  rill ; 
Smiles   in  the   Nargis'  love-lorn  eyes,  and 

'joys  the  dance  of  Daffodil ; 

IX 

Melts  in  the  saffron  light  of  Dawn  to  hear 

the  moaning  of  the  Dove ; 
Delights  in  Sundown's  purpling  hues  when 

Bulbul  woos  the  Rose's  love. 

i   Illusion. 

53 


THE   KASlDAH 


Finds  mirth  and  joy  in  Jamshid-bowl ;  toys 
with  the  Daughter  of  the  vine; 

And  bids  the  beauteous  cup-boy  say,' '  Master 
I  bring  thee  ruby  wine  ! "  x 

XI 

Sips  from  the  maiden's  lips  the  dew ;  brushes 
the  bloom  from  virgin  brow  :  — 

Such  is  his  fleshly  bliss  that  strives  the 
Maker  through  the  Made  to  know. 


I  've  tried  them  all,  I  find  them  all  so  same 
and  tame,  so  drear,  so  dry ; 

My  gorge  ariseth  at  the  thought;  I  com- 
mune with  myself  and  cry :  — 


Better  the  myriad  toils  and  pains  that  make 

the  man  to  manhood  true, 
This  be  the  rule  that  guideth  life ;  these  be 

the  laws  for  me  and  you : 

XIV 

With  Ignor'ance  wage  eternal  war,  to  know 

thy  self  for  ever  strain, 
Thine  ignorance  of  thine  ignorance  is   thy 

fiercest  foe,  thy  deadliest  bane  ; 

i  That  all  the  senses,  even  the  ear  may  enjoy. 

54 


THE    KASfDAH 


That  blunts  thy  sense,  and  dulls  thy  taste ;  that 
deafs  thine  ears,  and  blinds  thine  eyes ; 

Creates  the  thing  that  never  was,  the  Thing 
that  ever  is  defies. 


XVI 

The    finite    Atom    infinite    that   forms   thy 

circle's  centre-dot, 
So  full-sufficient  for  itself,  for  other  selves 

existing  not, 


Finds  the  world  mighty  as  'tis  small;  yet 
must  be  fought  the  unequal  fray; 

A  myriad  giants  here ;  and  there  a  pinch  of 
dust,  a  clod  of  clay. 


Yes !  maugre  all  thy  dreams  of  peace  still 
must  the  fight  unfair  be  fought; 

Where  thou  mayst  learn  the  noblest  lore, 
to  know  that  all  we  know  is  nought. 

XIX 

True  to  thy  Nature,  to  Thy  self,  Fame  and 

Disfame  nor  hope  nor  fear: 
Enough   to  thee   the  small    still    voice    aye 

thund'ering  in  thine  inner  ear. 


55 


THE   KAStDAH 


XX 


From  self-approval  seek  applause  :  What  ken 

not  men  thou  kennest,  thou! 
Spurn  ev'ry  idol  others  raise:  Before  thine 

own  Ideal  bow : 


Be  thine  own  Deus :  Make  self  free,  liberal 

as  the  circling  air : 
Thy  Thought  to  thee  an  Empire  be ;  break 

every  prison'ing  lock  and  bar : 


Do  thou  the  Ought  to  self  aye  owed ;  here 
all  the  duties  meet  and  blend, 

In  widest  sense,  withouten  care  of  what 
began,  for  what  shall  end. 

XXIII 

Thus,  as  thou  view  the  Phantom -forms 
which  in  the  misty  Past  were  thine, 

To  be  again  the  thing  thou  wast  with  honest 
pride  thou  may'st  decline ; 


And,  glancing  down  the  range  of  years,  fear 

not  thy  future  self  to  see  ; 
Resign'd  to  life,  to  death  resign'd,  as  though 

the  choice  were  nought  to  thee. 


56 


THE    KASfDAH 


On    Thought   itself  feed   not   thy  thought ; 

nor  turn  from  Sun  and  Light  to  gaze, 
At    darkling    cloisters    paved   with    tombs, 

where  rot  the  bones  of  bygone  days : 

xxvi 

"  Eat  not  thy  heart,"  the  Sages  said ;  "  nor 
mourn  the  Past,  the  buried  Past ;  " 

Do  what  thou  dost,  be  strong,  be  brave ; 
and,  like  the  Star,  nor  rest  nor  haste. 

XXVII 

Pluck  the  old  woman  from  thy  breast:  Be 
stout  in  woe,  be  stark  in  weal ; 

Do  good  for  Good  is  good  to  do:  Spurn 
bribe  of  Heav'en  and  threat  of  Hell. 

XXVIII 

To  seek  the  True,  to  glad  the  heart,  such  is 

of  life  the  HIGHER  LAW, 
Whose  difference  is  the  Man's  degree,  the 

Man  of  gold,  the  Man  of  straw. 

XXIX 

See  not  that  something  in  Mankind  that 
rouses  hate  or  scorn  or  strife, 

Better  the  worm  of  Izrail 1  than  Death  that 
walks  in  form  of  life. 

i  The  Angel  of  Death. 
57 


THE    KASfDAH 


XXX 


Survey  thy  kind  as  One  whose  wants  in  the 
great  Human  Whole  unite;1 

The  Homo  rising  high  from  earth  to  seek 
the  Heav'ens  of  Life-in -Light; 


And  hold  Humanity  one  man,  whose  univer- 
sal agony 

Still  strains  and  strives  to  gain  the  goal, 
where  agonies  shall  cease  to  be. 

XXXII 

Believe  in  all  things;  none  believe;  judge 
not  nor  warp  by  "  Facts"  the  thought; 

See  clear,  hear  clear,  tho'  life  may  seem 
Maya  and  Mirage,  Dream  and  Naught. 

XXXIII 

Abjure  the  Why  and  seek  the  How:  the 
God  and  gods  enthroned  on  high, 

Are  silent  all,  are  silent  still ;  nor  hear  thy 
voice,  nor  deign  reply. 

xxxiv 

The  Now,  that  indivis'ible  point  which  studs 

the  length  of  infinite  line 
Whose  ends  are  nowhere,  is  thine  all,  the 

puny  all  thou  callest  thine. 

i  The   "Great   Man"   of  the    Enochites   and    the 
Mormons. 


5S 


THE    KASfDAH 


Perchance  the  law  some  Giver  hath :  Let 
be  !  let  be  !  what  canst  thou  know  ? 

A  myriad  races  came  and  went ;  this  Sphinx 
hath  seen  them  come  and  go. 


Haply  the  Law  that  rules  the  world  allows 

to  man  the  widest  range ; 
And  haply  Fate  's  a  Theist-word,  subject  to 

human  chance  and  change. 

XXXVII 

This  u  I "  may  find  a  future  Life,  a  nobler 

copy  of  our  own, 
Where    every   riddle    shall  be  ree'd,   where 

every  knowledge  shall  be  known  ; 

XXXVIII 

Where  't  will  be  man's  to  see  the  whole  of 
what  on  Earth  he  sees  in  part; 

Where  change  shall  ne'er  surcharge  the 
thought;  nor  hope  defer'd  shall  hurt 
the  heart. 


But !  — faded  fiow'er  and  fallen  leaf  no  more 

shall  deck  the  parent  tree; 
And  man  once  dropt  by  Tree  of  Life  what 

hope  of  other  life  has  he  ? 


59 


THE   KASfDAH 


XL 


The  shatter'd  bowl  shall  know  repair;  the 
riven  lute  shall  sound  once  more ; 

But  who  shall  mend  the  clay  of  man,  the 
stolen  breath  to  man  restore  ? 


The  shiver'd  clock  again  shall  strike ;  the 
broken  reed  shall  pipe  again: 

But  we,  we  die,  and  Death  is  one,  the  doom 
of  brutes,  the  doom  of  men. 

XLII 

Then,    if    Nirwana  •    round    our    life    with 

nothingness,  't  is  haply  best ; 
Thy  toils  and  troubles,  want   and  woe   at 

length  have  won  their  guerdon  —  Rest. 

XLIII 

Cease,  Abdu,  Cease!  Thy  song  is  sung,  nor 
think  the  gain  the  singer's  prize ; 

Till  men  hold  Ignor'ance  deadly  sin,  till  man 
deserves  his  title  "  Wise:  "  2 

XLIV 

In  Days  to  come,  Days  slow  to  dawn,  when 
Wisdom  deigns  to  dwell  with  men, 

These  echoes  of  a  voice  long  stilled  haply 
shall  wake  responsive  strain  : 


1  Comparative  annihilation. 

2  "  Homo  sapiens." 


60 


THE   KASfDAH 


XLV 


Wend  now  thy  way  with  brow  serene,  fear 
not  thy  humble  tale  to  tell :  — 

The  whispers  of  the  Desert -wind;  the  Tink- 
ling of  the  camel's-bell. 


bW 


NOTES 


In  the  1894  edition  of  The  Kasidab, 
Lady  Burton  has  a  note  of  her  own  on 
Section  vi,  Couplet  xiv  : 

"  I  think  he  is  alluding,  though  he  has 
not  expressed  it,  to  the  Marcionites'  heresy 
of  baptizing  for  the  dead.  The  Marcionites 
were  heretics  who  lived  at  Sinope,  a.  d. 
150.  Marcian  came  to  Rome  and  believed 
in  principles  similar  to  the  Manichaeans. 
When  a  man  died,  one  of  the  Marcionites 
sat  on  his  coffin,  and  another  asked  him  if 
he  were  willing  to  be  baptized,  and  he 
answered,  "  Yes,"  upon  which  he  was  bap- 
tized. These  heretics  quoted  Paul(i  Cor. 
xv,  29),  "  Else  what  shall  they  do  which 
are  baptized  for  the  dead,  if  the  dead  do  not 
rise  at  all  ?  Why  are  they  then  baptized 
for  the  dead?  "  Dr.  E.  Berdoe  says  "  that 
this  line  has  no  reference  to  the  Marcionite 
heresy  at  all,  but  to  Holy  baptism,  wherein 
we  are  buried  with  Christ.  The  reference 
is  manifestly  to  Romans  vi,  4,  '  Therefore 
we  are  buried  with  him  by  baptism  into 
death,'  and  the  following  context." 


NOTES 

NOTE  I 

HAjf    ABDU,   THE    MAN 

HAjf  abdu  has  been  known  to  me  for 
more  years  than  I  care  to  record.  A 
native,  it  is  believed,  of  Darabghird  in  the 
Yezd  Province,  he  always  preferred  to  style 
himself  El-Hichmakani,  afacetious  "  lackab  " 
or  surname,  meaning ' '  Of  No  -hall,  Nowhere." 
He  had  travelled  far  and  wide  with  his  eyes 
open  ;  as  appears  by  his  "  couplets."  To  a 
natural  facility,  a  knack  of  language -learning, 
he  added  a  store  of  desultory  various  read- 
ing; scraps  of  Chinese  and  old  Egyptian;  of 
Hebrew  and  Syriac;  of  Sanskrit  and  Prakrit; 
of  Slav,  especially  Lithuanian  ;  of  Latin  and 
Greek,  including  Romaic ;  of  Berber,  the 
Nubian  dialect,  and  of  Zend  and  Akkadian, 
besides  Persian,  his  mother-tongue,  and 
Arabic,  the  classic  of  the  schools.  Nor  was 
he  ignorant  of  "  the  -ologies "  and  the 
triumphs  of  modern  scientific  discovery. 
Briefly,  his  memory  was  well-stored;  and 
he  had  every  talent  save  that  of  using  his 
talents. 


65 


NOTES 

But  no  one  thought  that  he  "  woo'd  the 
Muse,"  to  speak  in  the  style  of  the  last 
century.  Even  his  intimates  were  ignorant 
of  the  fact  that  he  had  a  skeleton  in  his 
cupboard,  his  Kasidah  or  distichs.  He  con- 
fided to  me  his  secret  when  we  last  met  in 
Western  India — I  am  purposely  vague  in 
specifying  the  place.  When  so  doing  he 
held  in  hand  the  long  and  hoary  honours  of 
his  chin  with  the  points  towards  me,  as  if  to 
say  with  the  Island-King : 

There  is  a  touch  of  Winter  in  my  beard, 

A  sign  the  Gods  will  guard  me  from  imprudence. 

And  yet  the  piercing  eye,  clear  as  an  onyx, 
seemed  to  protest  against  the  plea  of  age. 
The  MS.  was  in  the  vilest  "  Shikastah  "  or 
running-hand  ;  and,  as  I  carried  it  off,  the 
writer  declined  to  take  the  trouble  of  copying 
out  his  cacograph. 

We,  his  old  friends,  had  long  addressed 
Haji  Abdu  by  the  sobriquet  of  Nabbiana 
("  our  Prophet  ") ;  and  the  reader  will  see 
that  the  Pilgrim  has,  or  believes  he  has,  a 
message  to  deliver.  He  evidently  aspires 
to  preach  a  Faith  of  his  own  ;  an  Eastern 
Version  of  Humanitarianism  blended  with 
the  sceptical  or,  as  we  now  say,  the  scientific 
habit  of  mind.  This  religion,  of  which 
Fetishism,     Hinduism    and     Heathendom ; 


66 


NOTES 

Judaeism,  Christianity  and  Islamism  are 
mere  fractions,  may,  methinks,  be  accepted 
by  the  Philosopher :  it  worships  with  single- 
minded  devotion  the  Holy  Cause  of  Truth, 
of  Truth  for  its  own  sake,  not  for  the  goods 
it  may  bring;  and  this  belief  is  equally 
acceptable  to  honest  ignorance,  and  to  the 
highest  attainments  in  nature-study. 

With  Confucius  the  Haji  cultivates  what 
Strauss  has  called  the  "stern  common -sense 
of  mankind ;  "  while  the  reign  of  order  is  a 
paragraph  of  his  "  Higher  Law."  He  traces 
from  its  rudest  beginnings  the  all  but  abso  - 
lute  universality  of  some  perception  by  man, 
called  "  Faith  ;  "  that  sensus  Numinis  which, 
by  inheritance  or  communication,  is  now 
universal  except  in  those  who  force  them- 
selves to  oppose  it.  And  he  evidently  holds 
this  general  consent  of  mankind  to  be  so 
far  divine  that  it  primarily  discovered  for 
itself,  if  it  did  not  create,  a  divinity.  He 
does  not  cry  with  the  Christ  of  Novalis, 
"  Children,  you  have  no  father;  "  and  per- 
haps he  would  join  Renan  in  exclaiming, 
Un  monde  sans  Dieu  est  horrible  ! 

But  he  recognises  the  incompatibility  of 
the  Infinite  with  the  Definite;  of  a  Being 
who  loves,  who  thinks,  who  hates  ;  of  an 
Actus parus  who  is  called  jealous,  wrathful 
and  revengeful,  with  an  "  Eternal  that  makes 


67 


for  righteousness."  In  the  presence  of  the 
endless  contradictions,  which  spring  from  the 
idea  of  a  Personal  Deity,  with  the  Synthesis, 
the  Begriffoi  Providence,  our  Agnostic  takes 
refuge  in  the  sentiment  of  an  unknown  and 
an  unknowable.  He  objects  to  the  countless 
variety  of  forms  assumed  by  the  perception 
of  a  Causa  Causans  (a  misnomer),  and  to 
that  intellectual  adoption  of  general  propo- 
sitions, capable  of  distinct  statement  but 
incapable  of  proofs,  which  we  term  Belief. 

He  looks  with  impartial  eye  upon  the 
endless  variety  of  systems,  maintained  with 
equal  confidence  and  self-sufficiency,  by  men 
of  equal  ability  and  honesty.  He  is  weary 
of  wandering  over  the  world,  and  of  finding 
every  petty  race  wedded  to  its  own  opinions  ; 
claiming  the  monopoly  of  Truth  ;  holding  all 
others  to  be  in  error,  and  raising  disputes 
whose  violence,  acerbity  and  virulence  are 
in  inverse  ratio  to  the  importance  of  the 
disputed  matter.  A  peculiarly  active  and 
acute  observation  taught  him  that  many 
of  these  jarring  families,  especially  those  of 
the  same  blood,  are  par  in  the  intellectual 
processes  of  perception  and  reflection  ;  that 
in  the  business  of  the  visible  working  world 
they  are  confessedly  by  no  means  superior 
to  one  another ;  whereas  in  abstruse  matters 
of   mere   Faith,   not   admitting    direct   and 


6S 


NOTES 

sensual  evidence,  one  in  a  hundred  will 
claim  to  be  right,  and  immodestly  charge 
the  other  ninety -nine  with  being  wrong. 

Thus  he  seeks  to  discover  a  system  which 
will  prove  them  all  right,  and  all  wrong; 
which  will  reconcile  their  differences ;  will' 
unite  past  creeds  ;  will  account  for  the  pres- 
ent, and  will  anticipate  the  future  with  a 
continuous  and  uninterrupted  development ; 
this,  too,  by  a  process,  not  negative  and 
distinctive,  but,  on  the  contrary,  intensely 
positive  and  constructive.  I  am  not  called 
upon  to  sit  in  the  seat  of  judgment ;  but  I 
may  say  that  it  would  be  singular  if  the 
attempt  succeeded.  Such  a  system  would 
be  all-comprehensive,  because  not  limited  by 
space,  time,  or  race  ;  its  principle  would  be 
extensive  as  Matter  itself,  and,  consequently, 
eternal.  Meanwhile  he  satisfies  himself, — 
the  main  point. 

Students  of  metaphysics  have  of  late 
years  defined  the  abuse  of  their  science 
as  "the  morphology  of  common  opinion." 
Contemporary  investigators,  they  say,  have 
been  too  much  occupied  with  introspection ; 
their  labours  have  become  merely  physio- 
logico-biographical,  and  they  have  greatly 
neglected  the  study  of  averages.  For,  says 
La  Rochefoucauld,  //  est  plus  aise  de  connoitre 
Vhomme  on  general  que  de  connoitre  un  homme 


69 


en  particulier ;  and  on  so  wide  a  subject  all 
views  must  be  one-sided. 

But  this  is  not  the  fashion  of  Easterns. 
They  have  still  to  treat  great  questions  ex 
analogia  universi,  instead  of  ex  analogia 
bominis.  They  must  learn  the  basis  of 
sociology,  the  philosophic  conviction  that 
mankind  should  be  studied,  not  as  a  con- 
geries of  individuals,  but  as  an  organic 
whole.  Hence  the  Zeitgeist,  or  historical 
evolution  of  the  collective  consciousness  of 
the  age,  despises  the  obsolete  opinion  that 
Society,  the  State,  is  bound  by  the  same 
moral  duties  as  the  simple  citizen.  Hence, 
too,  it  holds  that  the  "spirit  of  man,  being 
of  equal  and  uniform  substance,  doth  usually 
suppose  and  feign  in  nature  a  greater  equality 
and  uniformity  than  is  in  Truth." 

Christianity  and  Islamism  have  been  on 
their  trial  for  the  last  eighteen  and  twelve 
centuries.  They  have  been  ardent  in  pros- 
elytizing, yet  they  embrace  only  one-tenth 
and  one-twentieth  of  the  human  race.  Haji 
Abdu  would  account  for  the  tardy  and  unsat- 
isfactory progess  of  what  their  votaries  call 
"  pure  truths,"  by  the  innate  imperfections  of 
the  same.  Both  propose  a  reward  for  mere 
belief,  and  a  penalty  for  simple  unbelief ; 
rewards  and  punishments  being,  by  the  way, 
very  disproportionate.      Thus   they   reduce 


70 


everything  to  the  scale  of  a  somewhat 
unrefined  egotism;  and  their  demoralizing 
effects  become  clearer  to  every  progressive 
age. 

Haji  Abdu.  seeks  Truth  only,  truth  as  far 
as  man,  in  the  present  phase  of  his  develop- 
ment, is  able  to  comprehend  it.  He  disdains 
to  associate  utility,  like  Bacon  (Nov.  Org.  I. 
Aph.  124),  the  High  Priest  of  the  English 
Creed,  le  gros  bon  sens,  with  the  lumen  siccuvi 
ac  purum  notionum  verarum.  He  seems  to 
see  the  injury  inflicted  upon  the  sum  of 
thought  by  the  a  posteriori  superstition,  the 
worship  of  "facts,"  and  the  deification  of 
synthesis.  Lastly,  came  the  reckless  way 
in  which  Locke  "  freed  philosophy  from  the 
incubus  of  innate  ideas."  Like  Luther  and 
the  leaders  of  the  great  French  Revolution, 
he  broke  with  the  Past;  and  he  threw  over- 
board the  whole  cargo  of  human  tradition. 
The  result  has  been  an  immense  movement 
of  the  mind  which  we  love  to  call  Progress, 
when  it  has  often  been  retrograde ;  together 
with  a  mighty  development  of  egotism 
resulting  from  the  pampered  sentiment  of 
personality. 

The  Haji  regrets  the  excessive  importance 
attached  to  a  possible  future  state:  he  looks 
upon  this  as  a  psychical  stimulant,  a  day 
dream,  whose  revulsion  and  reaction  disorder 


/i 


waking  life.  The  condition  may  appear 
humble  and  prosaic  to  those  exalted  by  the 
fumes  of  Fancy,  by  a  spiritual  dram -drinking 
which,  like  the  physical,  is  the  pursuit  of  an 
ideal  happiness.  But  he  is  too  wise  to 
affirm  or  to  deny  the  existence  of  another 
world.  For  life  beyond  the  grave  there  is  no 
consensus  of  mankind,  no  Catholic  opinion 
held  setnper,  et  tibique,  et  ab  omnibus.  The 
intellectual  faculties  (perception  and  reflec- 
tion) are  mute  upon  the  subject:  they  bear 
no  testimony  to  facts ;  they  show  no  proof. 
Even  the  instinctive  sense  of  our  kind  is 
here  dumb.  We  may  believe  what  we  are 
taught:  we  can  know  nothing.  He  would, 
therefore,  cultivate  that  receptive  mood 
which,  marching  under  the  shadow  of  mighty 
events,  leads  to  the  highest  of  goals,  —  the 
development  of  Humanity.  With  him  sus- 
pension of  judgment  is  a  system. 

Man  has  done  much  during  the  sixty-eight 
centuries  which  represent  his  history.  This 
assumes  the  first  Egyptian  Empire,  following 
the  pre -historic,  to  begin  with  b.  c.  5000, 
and  to  end  with  b.  c.  3249.  It  was  the  Old, 
as  opposed  to  the  Middle,  the  New,  and  the 
Low:  it  contained  the  Dynasties  from  I  to 
X,  and  it  was  the  age  of  the  Pyramids,  at 
once  simple,  solid,  and  grand.  When  the 
praiser  of  the   Past  contends  that  modern 


72 


civilization  has  improved  in  nothing  upon 
Homer  and  Herodotus,  he  is  apt  to  forget 
that  every  schoolboy  is  a  miracle  of  learning 
compared  with  the  Cave-man  and  the  palaeo- 
lithic race.  And,  as  the  Past  has  been,  so 
shall  the  Future  be. 

The  Pilgrim's  view  of  life  is  that  of  the 
Soofi,  with  the  usual  dash  of  Buddhistic 
pessimism.  The  profound  sorrow  of  exist- 
ence, so  often  sung  by  the  dreamy  Eastern 
poet,  has  now  passed  into  the  practical 
European  mind.  Even  the  light  Frenchman 
murmurs, — 

Moi,  moi,  chaque  jour  courbant  plus  bas  ma  tete 
Je  passe  —  et  refroidi  sous  ce  soleil  joyeux, 

Je  m'en  irai  bientot,  au  milieu  de  la  fete, 
Sans  que  rien  manque  au  monde  immense  et  radieux. 

But  our  Haji  is  not  Nihilistic  in  the  "no- 
nothing"  sense  of  Hood's  poem,  or,  as  the 
American  phrases  it,  "  There  is  nothing  new, 
nothing  true,  and  it  don't  signify."  His  is 
a  healthy  wail  over  the  shortness,  and  the 
miseries  of  life,  because  he  finds  all  created 
things  — 

Measure  the  world,  with  "  Me  "  immense. 

He  reminds  us  of  St.  Augustine  (Med. 
c.  21).  "  Vita  haec,  vita  misera,  vita  caduca, 
vita  incerta,  vita  laboriosa,  vita  immunda, 
vita  domina   malorum,  regina   superborum, 


73 


NOTES 

plena  miseriis  et  erroribus  .  .  .  Quam 
humores  tumidant,  escae  inflant,  jejunia 
macerant,  joci  dissolvunt,  tristitiae,  consu- 
munt;  sollicitudo  coarctat,  securitas  hebetat, 
divitiae  inflant  et  jactant.  Paupertas  dejicit, 
juventus  extollit,  senectus  incurvat,  impor- 
tunitas  frangit,  maeror  deprimit.  Et  his  malis 
omnibus  mors  furibunda  succedit."  Rut  for 
furibunda  the  Pilgrim  would,  perhaps,  read 
benedicta. 

With  Cardinal  Newman,  one  of  the  glories 
of  our  age,  Haji  Abdu  finds  "  the  Light  of 
the  world  nothing  else  than  the  Prophet's 
scroll,  full  of  lamentations  and  mourning 
and  woe."  I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting 
all  this  fine  passage,  if  it  be  only  for  the 
sake  of  its  lame  and  shallow  deduction. 
"  To  consider  the  world  in  its  length  and 
breadth,  its  various  history  and  the  many 
races  of  men,  their  starts,  their  fortunes, 
their  mutual  alienation,  their  conflicts,  and 
then  their  ways,  habits,  governments,  forms 
of  worship ;  their  enterprises,  their  aimless 
courses,  their  random  achievements  and 
acquirements,  the  impotent  conclusion  of 
long-standing  facts,  the  tokens  so  faint  and 
broken  of  a  superintending  design,  the  blind 
evolution  (!)  of  what  turn  out  to  be  great 
powers  or  truths,  the  progress  of  things  as 
if  from  unreasoning  elements,  not  towards 


74 


final  causes ;  the  greatness  and  littleness 
of  man,  his  far-reaching  aims  and  short 
duration,  the  curtain  hung  over  his  futurity, 
the  disappointments  of  life,  the  defeat  of 
good,  the  success  of  evil,  physical  pain, 
mental  anguish,  the  prevalence  and  intensity 
of  sin,  the  pervading  idolatries,  the  corrup- 
tions, the  dreary  hopeless  irreligion,  that 
condition  of  the  whole  race  so  fearfully  yet 
exactly  described  in  the  Apostle's  words, l  hav- 
ing no  hope  and  without  God  in  the  world '  — 
all  this  is  a  vision  to  dizzy  and  appal,  and 
inflicts  upon  the  mind  the  sense  of  a  profound 
mystery  which  is  absolutely  without  human 
solution."  Hence  that  admirable  writer 
postulates  some  "  terrible  original  calamity  ;  " 
and  thus  the  hateful  doctrine,  theologically 
called  "  original  sin,"  becomes  to  him  almost 
as  certain  as  that  "  the  world  exists,  and 
as  the  existence  of  God."  Similarly  the 
"  Schedule  of  Doctrines  "  of  the  most  liberal 
Christian  Church  insists  upon  human  deprav- 
ity, and  the  "  absolute  need  of  the  Holy 
Spirit's  agency  in  man's  regeneration  and 
sanctification." 

But  what  have  we  here  ?  The  "  original 
calamity "  was  either  caused  by  God  or 
arose  without  leave  of  God,  in  either  case 
degrading  God  to  man.  It  is  the  old 
dilemma  whose  horns  are  the  irreconcilable 


75 


NOTES 

attributes  of  goodness  and  omniscience  in 
the  supposed  Creator  of  sin  and  suffering. 
If  the  one  quality  be  predicable,  the  other 
cannot  be  predicable  of  the  same  subject. 
Far  better  and  wiser  is  the  essayist's  poetical 
explanation  now  apparently  despised  because 
it  was  the  fashionable  doctrine  of  the  sage 
bard's  day :  — 

All  nature  is  but  art    *    * 

All  discord  harmony  not  understood  : 

All  partial  evil  universal  good.  —  (Essay  289-292.) 

The  Pilgrim  holds  with  St.  Augustine  Abso- 
lute Evil  is  impossible  because  it  is  always 
rising  up  into  good.  He  considers  the  theory 
of  a  beneficent  or  maleficent  deity  a  purely 
sentimental  fancy,  contradicted  by  human 
reason  and  the  aspect  of  the  world.  Evil  is 
often  the  active  form  of  good;  as  F.  W. 
Newman  says,  "  so  likewise  is  Evil  the 
revelation  of  Good."  With  him  all  exist- 
ences are  equal :  so  long  as  they  possess  the 
Hindu  Agasa,  Life-fluid  or  vital  force,  it 
matters  not  they  be,  — 

Fungus  or  oak  or  worm  or  man. 

War,  he  says,  brings  about  countless  individ- 
ual miseries,  but  it  forwards  general  progress 
by  raising  the  stronger  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
weaker  races.  Earthquakes  and  cyclones 
ravage  small  areas ;   but  the  former  builds 


76 


up  earth  for  man's  habitation,  and  the  latter 
renders  the  atmosphere  fit  for  him  to  breathe. 
Hence  he  echoes : 

—  The  universal  Cause 
Acts  not  by  partial  but  by  general  laws. 

Ancillary  to  the  churchman's  immoral  view 
of  "original  sin"  is  the  unscientific  theory 
that  evil  came  into  the  world  with  Adam 
and  his  seed.  Let  us  ask  what  was  the 
state  of  our  globe  in  the  pre -Adamite  days 
when  the  tyrants  of  the  Earth,  the  huge 
Saurians  and  other  monsters  lived  in  per- 
petual strife,  in  a  destructiveness  of  which 
we  have  now  only  the  feeblest  examples  ? 
What  is  the  actual  state  of  the  world  of 
waters,  where  the  only  object  of  life  is  death, 
where  the  Law  of  murder  is  the  Law  of 
Development  ? 

Some  will  charge  the  Haji  with  irrever- 
ence, and  hold  him  a  "  lieutenant  of  Satan 
who  sits  in  the  chair  of  pestilence."  But  he 
is  not  intentionally  irreverent.  Like  men  of 
far  higher  strain,  who  deny  divinely  the 
divine,  he  speaks  the  things  that  others 
think  and  hide.  With  the  author  of  "Super- 
natural Religion,"  he  holds  that  we  "  gain 
infinitely  more  than  we  lose  in  abandoning 
belief  in  the  reality  of  revelation;"  and  he 
looks  forward  to  the  day  when   "  the  old 


77 


NOTES 

tyranny  shall  have  been  broken,  and  when 
the  anarchy  of  transition  shall  have  passed 
away."  But  he  is  an  Eastern.  When  he 
repeats  the  Greek's  "  Remember  not  to 
believe,"  he  means  Strive  to  learn,  to  know, 
for  right  ideas  lead  to  right  actions.  Among 
the  couplets  not  translated  for  this  eclogue 
is :  — 

Of  all  the  safest  ways  of  Life  the  safest  way  is  still 

to  doubt, 
Men  win  the  future  world  with  Faith,  the  present 

world  they  win  without. 

This  is  the  Spaniard's  :  — 

De  las  cosas  mas  seguras,  mas  seguro  es  duvidar  ; 

a  typically  modern  sentiment  of  the  Brazen 
Age  of  Science  following  the  Golden  Age  of 
Sentiment.     But  the  Pilgrim  continues:  — 

The  sages  say  :  I  tell  thee  no  !  with  equal  faith  all 

Faiths  receive  ; 
None  more,  none  less,  for  Doubt  is  Death  :   they 

live  the  most  who  most  believe. 

Here,  again,  is  an  oriental  subtlety;  a 
man  who  believes  in  everything  equally  and 
generally  may  be  said  to  believe  in  nothing. 
It  is  not  a  simple  European  view  which 
makes  honest  Doubt  worth  a  dozen  of  the 
Creeds.  And  it  is  in  direct  opposition  to 
the  noted  writer  who  holds  that  the  man  of 
simple  faith  is   worth  ninety-nine  of  those 


78 


NOTES 

who  hold  only  to  the  egotistic  interests  of 
their  own  individuality.  This  dark  saying 
means  (if  it  mean  anything),  that  the  so-called 
moral  faculties  of  man,  fancy  and  ideality, 
must  lord  it  over  the  perceptive  and  reflective 
powers, — a  simple  absurdity  !  It  produced 
a  Turricremata,  alias  Torquemada,  who, 
shedding  floods  of  honest  tears,  caused  his 
victims  to  be  burnt  alive;  and  an  Anchieta, 
the  Thaumaturgist  of  Brazil,  who  beheaded 
a  converted  heretic  lest  the  latter  by  lapse 
from  grace  lose  his  immortal  soul. 

But  this  vein  of  speculation,  which  bigots 
brand  as  "  Doubt,  Denial,  and  Destruction  ;  " 
this  earnest  religious  scepticism  ;  this  curious 
inquiry,  "  Has  the  universal  tradition  any 
base  of  fact?  "  ;  this  craving  after  the  secrets 
and  mysteries  of  the  future,  the  unseen,  the 
unknown,  is  common  to  all  races  and  to 
every  age.  Even  amongst  the  Romans, 
whose  model  man  in  Augustus'  day  was 
Horace,  the  philosophic,  the  epicurean,  we 
find  Propertius  asking:  — 

An  ficta  in  miseras  descendit  fabula  gentes 
Et  timor  haud  ultra  quam  rogus  esse  potest  ? 

To  return :  the  Pilgrim's  doctrines  upon 
the  subject  of  conscience  and  repentance 
will  startle  those  who  do  not  follow  his  train 
of  thought :  — 


79 


NOTES 

Never  repent  because  thy  will  with  will  of  Fate  be 

not  at  one : 
Think,  an  thou  please,  before  thou  dost,  but  never 

rue  the  deed  when  done. 

This  again  is  his  modified  fatalism.  He 
would  not  accept  the  boisterous  mode  of 
cutting  the  Gordian-knot  proposed  by  the 
noble  British  Philister — "we  know  we're 
free  and  there  's  an  end  on  it !  "  He  prefers 
Lamarck's,  "  The  will  is,  in  truth,  never  free." 
He  believes  man  to  be  a  co-ordinate  term 
of  Nature's  great  progression ;  a  result  of  the 
interaction  of  organism  and  environment, 
working  through  cosmic  sections  of  time. 
He  views  the  human  machine,  the  pipe  of 
flesh,  as  depending  upon  the  physical  theory 
of  life.  Every  corporeal  fact  and  phenom- 
enon which,  like  the  tree,  grows  from  within 
or  without,  is  a  mere  product  of  organization  ; 
living  bodies  being  subject  to  the  natural 
law  governing  the  lifeless  and  the  inorganic. 
Whilst  the  religionist  assures  us  that  man  is 
not  a  mere  toy  of  fate,  but  a  free  agent 
responsible  to  himself,  with  work  to  do  and 
duties  to  perform,  the  Haji,  with  many 
modern  schools,  holds  Mind  to  be  a  word 
describing  a  special  operation  of  matter;  the 
faculties  generally  to  be  manisfestations  of 
movements  in  the  central  nervous  system ; 
and  every  idea,  even  of  the  Deity,  to  be  a 


80 


NOTES 

certain  little  pulsation  of  a  certain  little  mass 
of  animal  pap,  —  the  brain.  Thus  he  would 
not  object  to  relationship  with  a  tailless 
catarrhine  anthropoid  ape,  descended  from  a 
monad  or  a  primal  ascidian. 

Hence  he  virtually  says,  "  I  came  into  the 
world  without  having  applied  for  or  having 
obtained  permission ;  nay,  more,  without  my 
leave  being  asked  or  given.  Here  I  find 
myself  hand-tied  by  conditions,  and  fettered 
by  laws  and  circumstances,  in  making  which 
my  voice  had  no  part.  While  in  the  womb 
I  was  an  automaton;  and  death  will  find  me 
a  mere  machine.  Therefore  not  I,  but  the 
Law,  or,  if  you  please,  the  Lawgiver,  is 
answerable  for  all  my  actions."  Let  me 
here  observe  that  to  the  Western  mind 
"  Law "  postulates  a  Lawgiver ;  not  so  to 
the  Eastern,  and  especially  to  the  Soofi,  who 
holds  these  ideas  to  be  human,  unjustifiably 
extended  to  interpreting  the  non-human, 
which  men  call  the  Divine. 

Further  he  would  say,  "  I  am  an  individual 
(qui  nil  habet  dividuij,  a  circle  touching  and 
intersecting  my  neighbours  at  certain  points, 
but  nowhere  corresponding,  nowhere  blend- 
ing. Physically  I  am  not  identical  in  all 
points  with  other  men.  Morally  I  differ 
from  them  :  in  nothing  do  the  approaches  of 
knowledge,   my  five   organs  of  sense  (with 


Si 


NOTES 

their  Shelleyan  "  interpenetration  "),  exactly 
resemble  those  of  any  other  being.  Ergo, 
the  effect  of  the  world,  of  life,  of  natural 
objects,  will  not  in  my  case  be  the  same  as 
with  the  beings  most  resembling  me.  Thus 
I  claim  the  right  of  creating  or  modifying 
for  my  own  and  private  use,  the  system 
which  most  imports  me  ;  and  if  the  reasonable 
leave  be  refused  to  me,  I  take  it  without 
leave. 

"But  my  individuality,  however  all-suffi- 
cient for  myself,  is  an  infinitesimal  point,  an 
atom  subject  in  all  things  to  the  Law  of 
Storms  called  Life.  I  feel,  I  know  that 
Fate  is.  But  I  cannot  know  what  is  or  what 
is  not  fated  to  befall  me.  Therefore  in  the 
pursuit  of  perfection  as  an  individual  lies  my 
highest,  and  indeed  my  only  duty,  the  4 1 ' 
being  duly  blended  with  the  '  We.'  I  object 
to  be  a  'self-less  man,'  which  to  me  denotes 
an  inverted  moral  sense.  I  am  bound  to 
take  careful  thought  concerning  the  conse- 
quences of  every  word  and  deed.  When, 
however,  the  Future  has  become  the  Past, 
it  would  be  the  merest  vanity  for  me  to 
grieve  or  to  repent  over  that  which  was 
decreed  by  universal  Law." 

The  usual  objection  is  that  of  man's 
practice.  It  says,  "  This  is  well  in  theory  . 
but  how  carry  it   out  ?     For  instance,   why 


82 


NOTES 

would  you  kill,  or  give  over  to  be  killed,  the 
man  compelled  by  Fate  to  kill  your  father  ?" 
Haji  Abdu  replies,  "  I  do  as  others  do,  not 
because  the  murder  was  done  by  him,  but 
because  the  murderer  should  not  be  allowed 
another  chance  of  murdering.  He  is  a  tiger 
who  has  tasted  blood  and  who  should  be 
shot.  I  am  convinced  that  he  was  a  tool  in 
the  hands  of  Fate,  but  that  will  not  prevent 
my  taking  measures,  whether  predestined  or 
not,  in  order  to  prevent  his  being  similarly 
used  again." 

As  with  repentance  so  with  conscience. 
Conscience  may  be  a  "fear  which  is  the 
shadow  of  j  ustice ;  "  even  as  pity  is  the  shadow 
of  love.  Though  simply  a  geographical  and 
chronological  accident,  which  changes  with 
every  age  of  the  world,  it  may  deter  men  from 
seeking  and  securing  the  prize  of  successful 
villany.  But  this  incentive  to  beneficence 
must  be  applied  to  actions  that  will  be  done, 
not  to  deeds  that  have  been  done. 

The  Haji,  moreover,  carefully  distinguishes 
between  the  working  of  fate  under  a  personal 
God,  and  under  the  Reign  of  Law.  In  the 
former  case  the  contradiction  between  the 
foreknowledge  of  a  Creator,  and  the  free-will 
of  a  Creature,  is  direct,  palpable,  absolute. 
We  might  as  well  talk  of  black-whiteness 
and  of  white -blackness.     A  hundred  genera- 


83 


NOTES 

tions  of  divines  have  never  been  able  to  ree 
the  riddle  ;  a  million  will  fail.  The  difficulty 
is  insurmountable  to  the  Theist  whose 
Almighty  is  perforce  Omniscient,  and  as 
Omniscient,  Prescient.  But  it  disappears 
when  we  convert  the  Person  into  Law,  or  a 
settled  order  of  events;  subject,  moreover, 
to  certain  exceptions  fixed  and  immutable, 
but  at  present  unknown  to  man.  The  differ- 
ence is  essential  as  that  between  the  penal 
code  with  its  narrow  forbiddal,  and  the  broad 
commandment  which  is  a  guide  rather  than 
a  task -master. 

Thus,  too,  the  belief  in  fixed  Law,  versus 
arbitrary  will,  modifies  the  Haji's  opinions 
concerning  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  Man- 
kind, das  rastlose  Ursachenthier,  is  born  to  be 
on  the  whole  equally  happy  and  miserable. 
The  highest  organisms,  the  fine  porcelain  of 
our  family,  enjoy  the  most  and  suffer  the 
most:  they  have  a  capacity  for  rising  to 
the  empyrean  of  pleasure  and  for  plunging 
deep  into  the  swift -flowing  river  of  woe  and 
pain.     Thus  Dante  (Inf.  vi.  106): 

—  tua  scienza 
Che  vuol,  quanto  la  cosa  e  piu  perfetta 
Piu  senta  '1  bene,  e  cosi  la  doglienza. 

So  Buddhism  declares  that  existence  in  itself 
implies    effort,   pain    and   sorrow;  and,   the 


NOTES 

higher  the  creature,  the  more  it  suffers.  The 
common  clay  enjoys  little  and  suffers  little. 
Sum  up  the  whole  and  distribute  the  mass: 
the  result  will  be  an  average  ;  and  the  beggar 
is,  on  the  whole,  happy  as  the  prince.  Why, 
then,  asks  the  objector,  does  man  ever  strive 
and  struggle  to  change,  to  rise ;  a  struggle 
which  involves  the  idea  of  improving  his 
condition  ?  The  Haji  answers,  "  Because 
such  is  the  Law  under  which  man  is  born:  it 
may  be  fierce  as  famine,  cruel  as  the  grave, 
but  man  must  obey  it  with  blind  obedience." 
He  does  not  enter  into  the  question  whether 
life  is  worth  living,  whether  man  should 
elect  to  be  born.  Yet  his  Eastern  pessimism, 
which  contrasts  so  sharply  with  the  optimism 
of  the  West,  re-echoes  the  lines  : 

—  a  life, 
With  large  results  so  little  rife, 
Though  bearable  seems  hardly  worth 
This  pomp  of  words,  this  pain  of  birth. 

Life,  whatever  may  be  its  consequence,  is 
built  upon  a  basis  of  sorrow.  Literature, 
the  voice  of  humanity,  and  the  verdict  of 
mankind  proclaim  that  all  existence  is  a 
state  of  sadness.  The  "physicians  of  the 
Soul "  would  save  her  melancholy  from 
degenerating  into  despair  by  doses  of  stead  - 
fast  belief  in  the  presence  of  God,  in  the 
assurance  of  Immortality,  and  in  visions  of 


85 


the  final  victory  of  good.  Were  Haji  Abdii 
a  mere  Theologist,  he  would  add  that  vSin, 
not  the  possibility  of  revolt,  but  the  revolt 
itself  against  conscience,  is  the  primary  form 
of  evil,  because  it  produces  error,  moral  and 
intellectual.  This  man,  who  omits  to  read 
the  Conscience -law,  however  it  may  differ 
from  the  Society-law,  is  guilty  of  negligence, 
That  man,  who  obscures  the  light  of  Nature 
with  sophistries,  becomes  incapable  of  dis- 
cerning his  own  truths.  In  both  cases  error, 
deliberately  adopted,  is  succeeded  by  suffer- 
ing which,  we  are  told,  comes  in  justice  and 
benevolence  as  a  warning,  a  remedy,  and  a 
chastisement. 

But  the  Pilgrim  is  dissatisfied  with  the 
idea  that  evil  originates  in  the  individual 
actions  of  free  agents,  ourselves  and  others. 
This  doctrine  fails  to  account  for  its  char- 
acteristics, —  essentiality  and  universality. 
That  creatures  endowed  with  the  mere 
possibility  of  liberty  should  not  always 
choose  the  Good  appears  natural.  But  that 
of  the  milliards  of  human  beings  who  have 
inhabited  Earth,  not  one  should  have  been 
found  invariably  to  choose  Good,  proves 
how  insufficient  is  the  solution.  Hence  no 
one  believes  in  the  existence  of  the  complete 
man  under  the  present  state  of  things.  The 
Haji  rejects  all  popular  and  mythical  expla- 


86 


nation  by  the  Fall  of  "  Adam,"  the  innate 
depravity  of  human  nature,  and  the  absolute 
perfection  of  certain  Incarnations,  which 
argues  their  divinity.  He  can  only  wail  over 
the  prevalence  of  evil,  assume  its  foundation 
to  be  error,  and  purpose  to  abate  it  by 
uprooting  that  Ignorance  which  bears  and 
feeds  it. 

His  "eschatology."  like  that  of  the  Soofis 
generally,  is  vague  and  shadowy.  He  may 
lean  towards  the  doctrine  of  Marc  Aurelius, 
"The  unripe  grape,  the  ripe  and  the  dried: 
all  things  are  changes  not  into  nothing,  but 
into  that  which  is  not  at  present."  This  is 
one  of  the  monstruosa  opinionum  porte)ita 
mentioned  by  the  XlXth  General  Council, 
alias  the  First  Council  of  the  Vatican.  But 
he  only  accepts  it  with  a  limitation.  He 
cleaves  to  the  ethical,  not  the  intellectual, 
worship  of  "  Nature,"  which  moderns  define 
to  be  an  "  unscientific  and  imaginary  synonym 
for  the  sum  total  of  observed  phenomena." 
Consequently  he  holds  to  the  "  dark  and 
degrading  doctrines  of  the  Materialist,"  the 
"  Hylotheist ;  "  in  opposition  to  the  spiritual- 
ist, a  distinction  far  more  marked  in  the 
West  than  in  the  East.  Europe  draws  a 
hard,  dry  line  between  Spirit  and  Matter : 
Asia  does  not. 

Among   us    the   Idealist    objects    to    the 


S7 


Materialists  that  the  latter  cannot  agree 
upon  fundamental  points ;  that  they  cannot 
define  what  is  an  atom  ;  that  they  cannot 
account  for  the  transformation  of  physical 
action  and  molecular  motion  into  conscious- 
ness; and  vice  versa,  that  they  cannot  say 
what  matter  is ;  and,  lastly,  that  Berkeley 
and  his  school  have  proved  the  existence  of 
spirit  while  denying  that  of  matter. 

The  Materislists  reply  that  the  want  of 
agreement  shows  only  a  study  insufficiently 
advanced ;  that  man  cannot  describe  an 
atom,  because  he  is  still  an  infant  in  science, 
yet  there  is  no  reason  why  his  mature  man- 
hood should  not  pass  through  error  and 
incapacity  to  truth  and  knowledge ;  that 
consciousness  becomes  a  property  of  matter 
when  certain  conditions  are  present ;  that 
Hyle  (1X77)  or  Matter  may  be  provisionally 
defined  as  "phenomena  with  a  substructure 
of  their  own,  transcendental  and  eternal, 
subject  to  the  action,  direct  or  indirect,  of 
the  five  senses,  whilst  its  properties  present 
themselves  in  three  states,  "  the  solid,  the 
liquid,  and  the  gaseous."  To  casuistical 
Berkeley  they  prefer  the  common  sense  of 
mankind.  They  ask  the  idealist  and  the 
spiritualist  why  they  cannot  find  names  for 
themselves  without  borrowing  from  a  "  dark 
and  degraded  "  school ;  why  the  former  must 


SS 


call  himself  after  his  eye  (idein)  ;  the  latter 
after  his  breath  (spiritus)  ?  Thus  the  Haji 
twits  them  with  affixing  their  own  limita- 
tions to  their  own  Almighty  Power,  and,  as 
Socrates  said,  with  bringing  down  Heaven 
to  the  market-place. 

Modern  thought  tends  more  and  more  to 
reject  crude  idealism  and  to  support  the 
monistic  theory,  the  double  aspect,  the  trans- 
figured realism.  It  discusses  the  Nature  of 
Things  in  Themselves.  To  the  question,  is 
there  anything  outside  of  us  which  corre- 
sponds with  our  sensations  ?  that  is  to  say, 
is  the  whole  world  simply  "  I,"  they  reply 
that  obviously  there  is  a  something  else ; 
and  that  this  something  else  produces  the 
brain-disturbance  which  is  called  sensation. 
Instinct  orders  us  to  do  something;  Reason 
(the  balance  of  faculties)  directs ;  and  the 
strongest  motive  controls.  Modern  Science, 
by  the  discover)'  of  Radiant  Matter,  a  fourth 
condition,  seems  to  conciliate  the  two  schools. 
"  La  decouverte  d'un  quatrieme  etat  de  la 
matiere,"  says  a  Reviewer,  "  c'est  la  porte 
ouverte  a  l'infini  de  ses  transformations ; 
c'est  l'homme  invisible  et  impalpable  de 
meme  possible  sans  cesser  d'etre  substantiel ; 
c'est  le  monde  des  esprits  entrant  sans 
absurdite  dans  la  domaine  des  hypotheses 
scientifiques ;    c'est   la   possibilite    pour    le 


89 


materialiste  de  croire  a  la  vie  d'outre  tombe, 
sans  renoncer  au  substratum  materiel  qu'il 
croit  necessaire  au  maintien  de  l'individ- 
ualite." 

With  Haji  Abdu  the  soul  is  not  material, 
for  that  would  be  a  contradiction  of  terms. 
He  regards  it,  with  many  moderns,  as  a 
state  of  things,  not  a  thing ;  a  convenient 
word  denoting  the  sense  of  personality,  of 
individual  identity.  In  its  ghostly  significa- 
tion he  discovers  an  artificial  dogma  which 
could  hardly  belong  to  the  brutal  savages  of 
the  Stone  Age.  He  finds  it  in  the  funereal 
books  of  ancient  Egypt,  whence  probably  it 
passed  to  the  Zendavesta  and  the  Vedas. 
In  the  Hebrew  Pentateuch,  of  which  part  is 
still  attributed  to  Moses,  it  is  unknown,  or, 
rather,  it  is  deliberately  ignored  by  the  author 
or  authors.  The  early  Christians  could  not 
agree  upon  the  subject;  Origen  advocated 
the  pre-existence  of  men's  souls,  supposing 
them  to  have  been  all  created  at  one  time 
and  successively  embodied.  Others  make 
Spirit  born  with  the  hour  of  birth  :  and  so 
forth. 

But  the  brain-action  or,  if  you  so  phrase 
it,  the  mind,  is  not  confined  to  the  reasoning 
faculties  ;  nor  can  we  afford  to  ignore  the 
sentiments,  the  affections  which  are,  perhaps, 
the  most  potent  realities  of  life.     Their  loud 


90 


affirmative  voice  contrasts  strongly  with  the 
titubant  accents  of  the  intellect.  They  seem 
to  demand  a  future  life,  even  a  state  of 
rewards  and  punishments  from  the  Maker  of 
the  world,  the  Ortolano  Etemo,1  the  Potter 
of  the  East,  the  Watchmaker  of  the  West. 
They  protest  against  the  idea  of  annihilation. 
They  revolt  at  the  notion  of  eternal  parting 
from  parents,  kinsmen  and  friends.  Yet  the 
dogma  of  a  future  life  is  by  no  means  catholic 
and  universal.  The  Anglo -European  race 
apparently  cannot  exist  without  it,  and  we 
have  lately  heard  of  the  "Aryan  Soul -land." 
On  the  other  hand,  many  of  the  Buddhist  and 
even  the  Brahman  Schools  preach  Nirwana 
(comparative  non-existence)  and  Parinirwana 
(absolute  nothingness).  Moreover,  the  great 
Turanian  family,  actually  occupying  all 
Eastern  Asia,  has  ever  ignored  it ;  and  the 
200,000,000  of  Chinese  Confucians,  the  mass 
of  the  nation,  protest  emphatically  against 
the  mainstay  of  the  western  creeds,  because 
it  "unfits  men  for  the  business  and  duty 
of  life,  by  fixing  their  speculations  on  an 
unknown  world."     And  even  its  votaries,  in 

1  The   Eternal   Gardener :    so   the   old    inscription 
saying:  — 

Hocatus  est  in 
H._.  J  damnatus  est  in    I  .  ,   . 
Homo<  humatus  est  in      ^horto- 
(renatus  est  in 


91 


all  ages,  races  and  faiths,  cannot  deny  that 
the  next  world  is  a  copy,  more  or  less 
idealized,  of  the  present ;  and  that  it  lacks 
a  single  particular  savouring  of  originality. 
It  is  in  fact  a  mere  continuation;  and  the 
continuation  is  "  not'proven." 

It  is  most  hard  to  be  a  man  ; 

and  the  Pilgrim's  sole  consolation  is  in 
self-cultivation,  and  in  the  pleasures  of  the 
affections.  This  sympathy  may  be  an 
indirect  self-love,  a  reflection  of  the  light  of 
egotism :  still  it  is  so  transferred  as  to  imply  a 
different  system  of  convictions.  It  requires 
a  different  name  :  to  call  benevolence  "self- 
love"  is  to  make  the  fruit  or  flower  not  only 
depend  upon  a  root  for  development  (which 
is  true),  but  the  very  root  itself  (which  is 
false).  And,  finally,  his  ideal  is  of  the  high- 
est :  his  praise  is  reserved  for : 

—  Lives 
Lived  in  obedience  to  the  inner  law 
Which  cannot  alter. 


92 


NOTE    II 

A  FEW  words  concerning  the  Kasidah 
itself.  Our  Haji  begins  with  a  mise- 
en- scene ;  and  takes  leave  of  the  Caravan 
setting  out  for  Mecca.  He  sees  the 
"  Wolf's  tail "  ( Dnm-i-giirg),  the  \vicavyts, 
or  wolf-gleam,  the  Diluculum,  the  Zodiacal 
dawn -light,  the  first  faint  brushes  of  white 
radiating  from  below  the  Eastern  horizon. 
It  is  accompanied  by  the  morning-breath 
( Dam-i-Subh),  the  current  of  air,  almost 
imperceptible  except  by  the  increase  of  cold, 
which  Moslem  physiologists  suppose  to  be 
the  early  prayer  offered  by  Nature  to  the 
First  Cause.  The  Ghoul -i-Biyaban  (Desert- 
Demon)  is  evidently  the  personification  of 
man's  fears  and  of  the  dangers  that  surround 
travelling  in  the  wilds.  The  "wold-where- 
none-save-He  (Allah)  -can -dwell  "  is  a  great 
and  terrible  wilderness  (  Dasht-i-la-siwa  Hu)  ; 
and  Allah's  Holy  Hill  is  Arafat,  near  Mecca, 
which  the  Caravan  reaches  after  passing 
through  Medina.  The  first  section  ends 
with  a  sore  lament  that  the  "  meetings  of 
this  world  take  place  upon  the  highway  of 
Separation ;  "  and  the  original  also  has  :  — 

The  chill  of  sorrow  numbs  my  thought :   methinks 

I  hear  the  passing  knell; 
As  dies  across  yon  thin  blue  line  the  tinkling  of  the 

Camel-bell. 


93 


NOTES 

The  next  section  quotes  the  various 
aspects  under  which  Life  appeared  to  the 
wise  and  foolish  teachers  of  humanity. 
First  comes  Hafiz,  whose  well-known  lines 
are  quoted  beginning  with  Shab-i-tarik  o 
bim-i-mauj,  &c.  Hur  is  the  plural  of  Ahwar, 
in  full  Ahwar  el-Ayn,  a  maid  whose  eyes 
are  intensely  white  where  they  should  be 
white,  and  black  elsewhere  :  hence  our  silly 
"  Houries."  Follows  Umar  i-Khayyam,  who 
spiritualized  Tasawwof,  or  Sooffeism,  even 
as  the  Soofis  (Gnostics)  spiritualized  Moslem 
Puritanism.     The  verses  alluded  to  are:  — 

You  know,  my  friends,  with  what  a  brave  carouse 
I  made  a  second  marriage  in  my  house, 

Divorced  old  barren  Reason  from  my  bed 
And  took  the  Daughter  of  the  Vine  to  spouse. 

(St.  60,  Mr.  FitzGerald's  translation.) 

Here  "  Wine  "  is  used  in  its  mystic  sense 
of  entranced  Love  for  the  Soul  of  Souls. 
Umar  was  hated  and  feared  because  he 
spoke  boldly  when  his  brethren  the  Soofis 
dealt  in  innuendoes.  A  third  quotation 
has  been  trained  into  a  likeness  of  the 
"  Hymn  of  Life,"  despite  the  commonplace 
and  the  navrante  vulgarite  which  charac- 
terize the  pseudo -Schiller- Anglo-American 
School.  The  same  has  been  done  to  the 
words  of  Isa  (Jesus) ;  for  the  author,  who  is 
well-read  in   the  Ingil  (Evangel),  evidently 


94 


NOTES 

intended  the  allusion.  Mansur  el-Hallaj 
(the  Cotton -Cleaner)  was  stoned  for  crudely 
uttering  the  Pantheistic  dogma  Ana  7  Hakk 
(I  am  the  Truth,  i.e.,  God),  wa  laysa 
fi-jubbati  if  Allah  (and  within  my  coat  is 
nought  but  God).  His  blood  traced  on  the 
ground  the  first-quoted  sentence.  Lastly, 
there  is  a  quotation  from  "  Sardanapalus, 
son  of  Anacyndaraxes,"  &c.  :  here  iralfc  may 
mean  sport ;  but  the  context  determines  the 
kind  of  sport  intended.  The  Zahid  is 
the  literal  believer  in  the  letter  of  the  Law, 
opposed  to  the  Soofi,  who  believes  in  its 
spirit :  hence  the  former  is  called  a  Zahiri 
(outsider),  and  the  latter  a  Batini,  an  insider. 
Moses  is  quoted  because  he  ignored  future 
rewards  and  punishments.  As  regards  the 
"  two  Eternities,"  Persian  and  Arab  meta- 
physicians split  Eternity,  i.e.,  the  negation 
of  Time,  into  two  halves,  Azal  (beginning- 
lessness)  and  Abaci  (endlessness) ;  both  being 
mere  words,  gatherings  of  letters  with  a 
subjective  significance.  In  English  we  use 
"  Eternal  "  (sEviternus,  age-long,  life-long) 
as  loosely,  by  applying  it  to  three  distinct 
ideas;  (i)  the  habitual,  in  popular  parlance; 
(2)  the  exempt  from  duration ;  and  (3)  the 
everlasting,  which  embraces  all  duration. 
"Omniscience-Maker"  is  the  old  Roman 
sceptic's  Homo  fecit  Deos. 


95 


NOTES 

The  next  section  is  one  long  wail  over  the 
contradictions,  the  mysteries,  the  dark  end, 
the  infinite  sorrowfulness  of  all  existence, 
and  the  arcanum  of  grief  which,  Luther  said, 
underlies  all  life.  As  with  Euripides  "  to 
live  is  to  die,  to  die  is  to  live."  Haji  Abdu 
borrows  the  Hindu  idea  of  the  human  body. 
"It  is  a  mansion,"  says  Menu,  "with  bones 
for  its  beams  and  rafters  ;  with  nerves  and 
tendons  for  cords ;  with  muscles  and  blood 
for  cement ;  with  skin  for  its  outer  covering  ; 
filled  with  no  sweet  perfume,  but  loaded 
with  impurities ;  a  mansion  infested  by  age 
and  sorrow ;  the  seat  of  malady  ;  harassed 
with  pains;  haunted  with  the  quality  of 
darkness  (Tama-guna),  and  incapable  of 
standing."  The  Pot  and  Potter  began  with 
the  ancient  Egyptians.  "  Sitting  as  a  potter 
at  the  wheel,  Cneph  (at  Philae)  moulds  clay, 
and  gives  the  spirit  of  life  to  the  nostrils 
of  Osiris."  Hence  the  Genesitic  "  breath." 
Then  we  meet  him  in  the  Vedas,  the  Being 
"  by  whom  the  fictile  vase  is  formed ;  the 
clay  out  of  which  it  is  fabricated."  We  find 
him  next  in  Jeremiah's  "  Arise  and  go  down 
unto  the  Potter's  house,"  &c.  (xviii.  2),  and 
lastly  in  Romans  (ix.  20),  "  Hath  not  the 
potter  power  over  the  clay  ? "  No  wonder 
that  the  first  Hand  who  moulded  the  man- 
mud  is  a  lieu  commun  in  Eastern  thought. 


96 


NOTES 

The  "  waste  of  agony "  is  Buddhism,  or 
Schopenhauerism  pure  and  simple,  I  have 
moulded  "Earth  on  Earth"  upon  "  Seint 
Ysidre  "  's  well-known  rhymes  (a.  d.  i  440) :  — 

Erthe  out  of  Erthe  is  wondirli  wrouzt, 

Erlhe  of  Erthe  hath  gete  a  dignite  of  nouzt, 

Erthe  upon  Erthe  hath  sett  all  his  thouzt 

How  that  Erthe  upon  Erthe  may  be  his  brouzt,  &c. 

The  "  Camel -rider,"  suggests  Ossian,  "  yet 
a  few  years  and  the  blast  of  the  desert 
comes."  The  dromedary  was  chosen  as 
Death's  vehicle  by  the  Arabs,  probably 
because  it  bears  the  Bedouin's  corpse  to  the 
distant  burial-ground,  where  he  will  lie 
among  his  kith  and  kin.  The  end  of  this 
section  reminds  us  of  :  — 

How  poor,  how  rich  ;  how  abject,  how  august, 
How  complicate,  how  wonderful  is  Man  ! 

The  Haji  now  passes  to  the  results  of  his 
long  and  anxious  thoughts:  I  have  pur- 
posely twisted  his  exordium  into  an  echo  of 

Milton :  — 

Till  old  experience  doth  attain 
To  something  of  prophetic  strain. 

He  boldly  declares  that  there  is  no  God 
as  man  has  created  his  Creator.  Here  he  is 
at  one  with  modern  thought :  —  "  En  general 
les  croyants  font  le  Dieu  comme  ils  sont 
eux-memes,"  (says   J.  J.    Rousseau,   "  Con- 


97 


NOTES 

fessions,"  I.  6) :  "  les  bons  le  font  bon  : 
les  mechants  le  font  mechant :  les  devots 
haineux  et  bilieux,  ne  voient  que  l'enfer, 
parce  qu'ils  voudraient  damner  tout  le 
monde ;  les  ames  aimantes  et  douces  n'y 
croient  guere;  et  l'un  des  etonnements  dont 
je  ne  reviens  pas  est  de  voir  le  bon  Fenelon 
en  parler  dans  son  Telemaque  comme  s'il 
y  croyoit  tout  de  bon  :  mais  j'espere  qu'il 
mentoit  alors;  car  enfin  quelque  veridique 
qu'on  soit,  il  faut  bien  mentir  quelquefois 
quand  on  est  eveque."  "  Man  depicts  him- 
self in  his  gods,"  says  Schiller.  Hence  the 
Natnrgott,  the  deity  of  all  ancient  peoples,  and 
with  which  every  system  began,  allowed  and 
approved  of  actions  distinctly  immoral,  often 
diabolical.  Belief  became  moralized  only 
when  the  conscience  of  the  community,  and 
with  it  of  the  individual  items,  began  aspiring 
to  its  golden  age, —  Perfection.  "  Dieu  est 
le  superlatif,  dont  le  positif  est  l'homme," 
says  Carl  Vogt ;  meaning,  that  the  popular 
idea  of  a  tinmen  is  that  of  a  magnified  and 
non-natural  man. 

He  then  quotes  his  authorities.  Buddha, 
whom  the  Catholic  Church  converted  to 
Saint  Josaphat,  refused  to  recognize  Ishwara 
(the  deity),  on  account  of  the  mystery  of 
the  "  cruelty  of  things."  Schopenhauer, 
Miss  Cobbe's  model  pessimist,  who  at  the 


9S 


humblest  distance  represents  Buddha  in  the 
world  of  Western  thought,  found  the  vision 
of  man's  unhappiness,  irrespective  of  his 
actions,  so  overpowering  that  he  concluded 
the  Supreme  Will  to  be  malevolent,  "heart- 
less, cowardly,  and  arrogant."  Confucius, 
the  "  Throneless  king,  more  powerful  than 
all  kings,"  denied  a  personal  deity.  The 
Epicurean  idea  rules  the  China  of  the  present 
day.  "  God  is  great,  but  He  lives  too  far 
off,"  say  the  Turanian  Santals  in  Aryan 
India ;  and  this  is  the  general  language  of 
man  in  the  Turanian  East. 

Haji  Abdu  evidently  holds  that  idolatry 
begins  with  a  personal  deity.  And  let  us 
note  that  the  latter  is  deliberately  denied  by 
the  "  Thirty-nine  Articles."  With  them  God 
is  "  a  Being  without  Parts  (personality)  or 
Passions."  He  professes  a  vague  Agnosti- 
cism, and  attributes  popular  faith  to  the 
fact  that  Timor  fecit  Deos  ;  "  every  religion 
being,  without  exception,  the  child  of  fear 
and  ignorance "  (Carl  Vogt).  He  now 
speaks  as  the  "  Drawer  of  the  Wine,"  the 
"Ancient  Taverner,"  the  "  Old  Magus," 
the  "  Patron  of  the  Mughan  or  Magians;" 
all  titles  applied  to  the  Soofi  as  opposed 
to  the  Zahid.  His  "  idols  "  are  the  eidola 
(illusions)  of  Bacon,  "having  their  founda- 
tions in  the  very  constitution  of  man,"  and 


99 


therefore  appropriately  called  fabu Ice.  That 
';  Nature's  Common  Course"  is  subject  to 
various  interpretation,  may  be  easily  proved. 
Aristotle  was  as  great  a  subverter  as  Alex- 
ander; but  the  quasi-prophetical  Stagyrite 
of  the  Dark  Ages,  who  ruled  the  world  till 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  became 
the  "twice  execrable"  of  Martin  Luther; 
and  was  finally  abolished  by  Galileo  and 
Newton.  Here  I  have  excised  two  stanzas. 
The  first  is :  — 

Theories  for    truths,    fable    for    fact ;    system    for 

science  vex  the  thought 
Life's  one  great  lesson  you  despise  —  to  know  that 

all  we  know  is  nought. 

This  is  in  fact :  — 

Well  didst  thou  say,  Athena's  noblest  son, 
The  most  we  know  is  nothing  can  be  known. 

The  next  is  :  — 

Essence  and  substance,  sequence,  cause,  beginning, 
ending,  space  and  time, 

These  be  the  toys  of  manhood's  mind,  at  once  ridic- 
ulous and  sublime. 

He  is  not  the  only  one  who  so  regards 
"bothering  Time  and  Space."  A  late  defi- 
nition of  the  "  infinitely  great,"  viz.,  that  the 
idea  arises  from  denying  form  to  any  figure ; 
of  the  "  infinitely  small,"  from  refusing  mag- 
nitude to  any  figure,  is  a  fair  specimen  of 
the  "  dismal  science  "  —  metaphysics. 


Another  omitted  stanza  reads:  — 

How  canst  thou,  Phenomen  !  pretend  the  Noumenon 

to  mete  and  span  ? 
Say  which  were  easier  probed  and  proved,  Absolute 

Being  or  mortal  man  ?' 

One  would  think  that  he  had  read  Kant 
on  the  "  Knowable  and  the  Unknowable," 
or  had  heard  of  the  Yankee  lady,  who  could 
"  differentiate  between  the  Finite  and  the 
Infinite."  It  is  a  commonplace  of  the  age, 
in  the  West  as  well  as  the  East,  that  Science 
is  confined  to  phenomena,  and  cannot  reach 
the  Noumena,  the  things  themselves.  This 
is  the  scholastic  realism,  the  "residuum  of  a 
bad  metaphysic,"  which  deforms  the  system 
of  Comte.  With  all  its  pretensions,  it  simply 
means  that  there  are,  or  can  be  conceived, 
things  in  themselves  {i.e.  unrelated  to 
thought) ;  that  we  know  them  to  exist ;  and, 
at  the  same  time,  that  we  cannot  know  what 
they  are.  But  who  dares  say  "cannot"? 
Who  can  measure  man's  work  when  he 
shall  be  as  superior  to  our  present  selves  as 
we  are  to  the  Cave-man  of  past  time  ? 

The  "Chain  of  Universe"  alludes  to  the 
Jain  idea  that  the  whole,  consisting  of 
intellectual  as  well  as  of  natural  principles, 
existed  from  all  eternity ;  and  that  it  has 
been  subject  to  endless  revolutions,  whose 
causes  are  the  inherent  powers  of   nature, 


NOTES 

intellectual  as  well  as  physical,  without 
the  intervention  of  a  deity.  But  the  Poet 
ridicules  the  "  non-human,"  i.e.,  the  not- 
ourselves,  the  negation  of  ourselves  and 
consequently  a  non-existence.  Most  East- 
erns confuse  the  contradictories,  in  which 
one  term  stands  for  something,  and  the 
other  for  nothing  {e.g.,  ourselves  and  not- 
ourselves),  with  the  contraries  (e.g.,  rich 
and  not  -rich  =  poor),  in  which  both  terms 
express  a  something.  So  the  positive-nega- 
tive "  infinite "  is  not  the  complement  of 
"  finite,"  but  its  negation.  The  Western 
man  derides  the  process  by  making  "not- 
horse  "  the  complementary  entity  of  "  horse." 
The  Pilgrim  ends  with  the  favourite  Soofi 
tenet  that  the  five  (six  ?)  senses  are  the  doors 
of  all  human  knowledge,  and  that  no  form 
of  man,  incarnation  of  the  deity,  prophet, 
apostle  or  sage,  has  ever  produced  an  idea 
not  conceived  within  his  brain  by  the  sole 
operation  of  these  vulgar  material  agents. 
Evidently  he  is  neither  spiritualist  nor 
idealist. 

He  then  proceeds  to  show  that  man 
depicts  himself  in  his  God,  and  that  "  God  is 
the  racial  expression  ;  "  a  pedagogue  on  the 
Nile,  an  abstraction  in  India,  and  an  astrol- 
oger in  Chaldaa;  where  Abraham,  says 
Berosus  (Josephus,  Ant.  I,  7,  §  2,  and  II,  9, 


102 


NOTES 

§  2)  was  "  skilful  in  the  celestial  science." 
He  notices  the  Akarana-Zaman  (endless 
Time)  of  the  Guebres,  and  the  working  dual, 
Hormuzd  and  Ahriman.  He  brands  the  God 
of  the  Hebrews  with  pugnacity  and  cruelty. 
He  has  heard  of  the  beautiful  creations  of 
Greek  fancy  which,  not  attributing  a  moral 
nature  to  the  deity,  included  Theology  in 
Physics  ;  and  which,  like  Professor  Tyndall, 
seemed  to  consider  all  matter  everywhere 
alive.  We  have  adopted  a  very  different 
Unitarianism;  Theology,  with  its  one  Crea- 
tor; Pantheism  with  its  "  one  Spirit's  plastic 
stress  ;  "  and  Science  with  its  one  Energy. 
He  is  hard  upon  Christianity  and  its  "  trinal 
God":  I  have  not  softened  his  expression 
(\^t  =  a  riddle),  although  it  may  offend 
readers.  There  is  nothing  more  enigmatical 
to  the  Moslem  mind  than  Christian  Trinita- 
rianism  :  all  other  objections  they  can  get 
over,  not  this.  Nor  is  he  any  lover  of 
Islamism,  which,  like  Christianity,  has  its 
ascetic  Hebraism  and  its  Hellenic  hedonism  ; 
with  the  world  of  thought  moving  between 
these  two  extremes.  The  former,  defined  as 
predominant  or  exclusive  care  for  the  practice 
of  right,  is  represented  by  Semitic  and  Arab 
influence,  Koranic  and  Hadisic.  The  latter, 
the  religion  of  humanity,  a  passion  for  life 
and  light,  for  culture  and  intelligence  ;  for 


103 


NOTES 

art,  poetry  and  science,  is  represented  in 
Islamism  by  the  fondly  and  impiously-cher- 
ished memory  of  the  old  Guebre  kings  and 
heroes,  beauties,  bards  and  sages.  Hence 
the  mention  of  Zal  and  his  son  Rostam ;  of 
Cyrus  and  of  the  Jam-i-Jamshid,  which  may 
be  translated  either  grail  (cup)  or  mirror:  it 
showed  the  whole  world  within  its  rim; 
and  hence  it  was  called  Jam-i-Jehan-numa 
(universe -exposing).  The  contemptuous 
expressions  about  the  diet  of  camel's  milk 
and  the  meat  of  the  Susmar,  or  green  lizard, 
are  evidently  quoted  from  Firdausi's  famous 
lines  beginning :  — 

Arab-ra  be-jai  rasid'est  kar. 

The  Haji  is  severe  upon  those  who  make 
of  the  Deity  a  Khwan-i-yaghma  (or  tray  of 
plunder)  as  the  Persians  phrase  it.  He  looks 
upon  the  shepherds  as  men, 

— Who  rob  the  sheep  themselves  to  clothe. 

So  Schopenhauer  (Leben,  &c.  by  Wilhelm 
Gewinner)  furiously  shows  how  the  "  English 
nation  ought  to  treat  that  set  of  hypocrites, 
impostors  and  money-graspers,  the  clergy, 
that  annually  devours  ^3,500,000." 

The  Haji  broadly  asserts  that  there  is  no 
Good  and  no  Evil  in  the  absolute  sense  as 
man  has  made  them.  Here  he  is  one  with 
Pope : — 


:o4 


NOTES 

And  spite  of  pride,  in  erring  nature's  spite 
One  truth  is  clear  —  whatever  is,  is  right. 

Unfortunately  the  converse  is  j  ust  as  true :  — 
whatever  is,  is  wrong.  Khizr  is  the  Elijah 
who  puzzled  Milman.  He  represents  the 
Soon,  the  Batini,  while  Musa  (Moses)  is  the 
Zahid,  the  Zahiri;  and  the  strange  adven- 
tures of  the  twain,  invented  by  the  Jews, 
have  been  appropriated  by  the  Moslems. 
He  derides  the  Freewill  of  man;  and,  like 
Diderot,  he  detects  "  pantaloon  in  a  prelate, 
a  satyr  in  a  president,  a  pig  in  a  priest,  an 
ostrich  in  a  minister,  and  a  goose  in  a  chief 
clerk."  He  holds  to  Fortune,  the  Tvxv  of 
Alcman,  which  is,  Evvo/xtas  re  kclI  Tleidovs 
dde\0ct,  Kal  ILpo/xadeias  dvydrrjp,  —  Chance, 
the  sister  of  Order  and  Trust,  and  the 
daughter  of  Forethought.  The  Scandina- 
vian Spinners  of  Fate  were  Urd  (the  Was, 
the  Past),  Verdandi  (the  Becoming,  or 
Present),  and  Skuld  (the  To-be,  or  Future). 
He  alludes  to  Plato,  who  made  the  Demi- 
ourgos  create  the  worlds  by  the  Logos  (the 
Hebrew  Dabar)  or  Creative  Word,  through 
the  iEons.  These  Aleves  of  the  Mystics 
were  spiritual  emanations  from  Alibu,  lit.  a 
wave  of  influx,  an  age,  period,  or  day ;  hence 
the  Latin  avum,  and  the  Welsh  A  wen,  the 
stream  of  inspiration  falling  upon  a  bard. 
Basilides,  the   Egypto -Christian,  made   the 


105 


NOTES 

Creator  evolve  seven  iEons  or  Pteromata 
(fulnesses) ;  from  two  of  whom,  Wisdom 
and  Power,  proceeded  the  365  degrees  of 
Angels.  All  were  subject  to  a  Prince  of 
Heaven,  called  Abraxas,  who  was  himself 
under  guidance  of  the  chief  iEon,  Wisdom. 
Others  represent  the  first  Cause  to  have 
produced  an  ^Eon  or  Pure  Intelligence  ;  the 
first  a  second,  and  so  forth  till  the  tenth. 
This  was  material  enough  to  affect  Hyle, 
which  thereby  assumed  a  spiritual  form. 
Thus  the  two  incompatibles  combined  in  the 
Scheme  of  Creation. 

He  denies  the  three  ages  of  the  Buddhists  : 
the  wholly  happy ;  the  happy  mixed  with 
misery,  and  the  miserable  tinged  with  happi- 
ness,—  the  present.  The  Zoroastrians  had 
four,  each  of  3,000  years.  In  the  first, 
Hormuzd,  the  good -god,  ruled  alone;  then 
Ahriman,  the  bad-god,  began  to  work  sub- 
serviently :  in  the  third  both  ruled  equally  ; 
and  in  the  last,  now  current,  Ahriman  has 
gained  the  day. 

Against  the  popular  idea  that  man  has 
caused  the  misery  of  this  world,  he  cites  the 
ages,  when  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  bred 
gigantic  cannibal  fishes ;  when  the  Oolites 
produced  the  mighty  reptile  tyrants  of  air, 
earth,  and  sea ;  and  when  the  monsters  of 
the  Eocene  and  Miocene  periods  shook  the 


106 


ground  with  their  ponderous  tread.  And 
the  world  of  waters  is  still  a  hideous  scene 
of  cruelty,  carnage,  and  destruction. 

He  declares  Conscience  to  be  a  geograph- 
ical and  chronological  accident.  Thus  he 
answers  the  modern  philosopher  whose  soul 
was  overwhelmed  by  the  marvel  and  the 
awe  of  two  things,  "  the  starry  heaven  above 
and  the  moral  law  within."  He  makes  the 
latter  sense  a  development  of  the  gregarious 
and  social  instincts ;  and  so  travellers  have 
observed  that  the  moral  is  the  last  step  in 
mental  progress.  His  Moors  are  the  savage 
Dankali  and  other  negroid  tribes,  who  offer 
a  cup  of  milk  with  one  hand  and  stab  with 
the  other.  He  translates  literally  the  Indian 
word  Hathi  (an  elephant),  the  animal  with 
the  Hath  (hand,  or  trunk).  Finally  he 
alludes  to  the  age  of  active  volcanoes,  the 
present,  which  is  merely  temporary,  the  shift- 
ing of  the  Pole,  and  the  spectacle  to  be  seen 
from  Mushtari,  or  the  planet  Jupiter. 

The  Haji  again  asks  the  old,  old  question, 
What  is  Truth  ?  And  he  answers  himself, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  wise  Emperor  of 
China,  "  Truth  hath  not  an  unchanging 
name."  A  modern  English  writer  says  :  "  I 
have  long  been  convinced  by  the  experience  of 
my  life,  as  a  pioneer  of  various  heterodoxies 
which  are  rapidly  becoming  orthodoxies,  that 


107 


NOTES 

nearly  all  truth  is  temperamental  to  us,  or 
given  in  the  affections  and  intuitions ;  and 
that  discussion  and  inquiry  do  little  more 
than  feed  temperament."  Our  poet  seems 
to  mean  that  the  Perceptions,  when  they 
perceive  truly,  convey  objective  truth,  which 
is  universal ;  whereas  the  Reflectives  and  the 
Sentiments,  the  working  of  the  moral  region, 
or  the  middle  lobe  of  the  phrenologists, 
supplies  only  subjective  truth,  personal  and 
individual.  Thus  to  one  man  the  axiom, 
Opes  irritamenta  ma/orum,  represents  a 
distinct  fact ;  while  another  holds  wealth  to 
be  an  incentive  for  good.  Evidently  both 
are  right,  according  to  their  lights. 

Haji  Abdu  cites  Plato  and  Aristotle,  as 
usual  with  Eastern  songsters,  who  delight  in 
Mantik  (logic).  Here  he  appears  to  mean 
that  a  false  proposition  is  as  real  a  proposi- 
tion as  one  that  is  true.  "  Faith  moves 
mountains  "  and  "  Manet  immota  fides"  are 
evidently  quotations.  He  derides  the  teach- 
ing of  the  "First  Council  of  the  Vatican" 
(cap.  v.),  "  all  the  faithful  are  little  children 
listening  to  the  voice  of  St.  Peter,"  who  is 
the  "  Prince  of  the  Apostles."  He  glances 
at  the  fancy  of  certain  modern  physicists, 
"  devotion  is  a  definite  molecular  change  in 
the  convolution  of  grey  pulp."  He  notices 
with  contumely  the  riddle  of  which  Milton 


1 08 


NOTES 

speaks    so    glibly,   where    the    Dialoguists, 

—  reasoned  high 
Of  providence,  foreknowledge,  will  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute. 

In  opposition  to  the  orthodox  Moham- 
medan tenets  which  make  Man's  soul  his 
percipient  Ego,  an  entity,  a  unity,  the  Soofi 
considers  it  a  fancy,  opposed  to  body,  which 
is  a  fact;  at  most  a  state  of  things,  not  a 
thing ;  a  consensus  of  faculties  whereof  our 
frames  are  but  the  phenomena.  This  is  not 
contrary  to  Genesitic  legend.  The  Hebrew 
Ruach  and  Aiabic  Ruh,  now  perverted  to 
mean  soul  or  spirit,  simply  signify  wind  or 
breath,  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  life. 
Their  later  schools  are  even  more  explicit : 
"  For  that  which  befalls  man  befalls  beasts  ; 
as  the  one  dies,  so  does  the  other  ;  they  have 
all  one  death  ;  all  go  unto  one  place"  (Eccles. 
iii.  19).  But  the  modern  soul,  a  nothing,  a 
string  of  negations,  a  negative  in  chief, 
is  thus  described  in  the  Mahabharat :  "  It  is 
indivisible,  inconceivable,  inconceptible:  it 
is  eternal,  universal,  permanent,  immovable  : 
it  is  invisible  and  unalterable."  Hence  the 
modern  spiritualism  which,  rejecting  materi- 
alism, can  use  only  material  language. 

These,  says  the  Haji,  are  mere  sounds. 
He  would  not  assert  "Verba  gignunt  verba," 

109 


NOTES 

but  "  Verba  gignunt  res,"  a  step  further. 
The  idea  is  Bacon's  "  idola  fori,  omnium 
molestissima,"  the  twofold  illusions  of  lan- 
guage ;  either  the  names  of  things  that  have 
no  existence  in  fact,  or  the  names  of  things 
whose  idea  is  confused  and  ill-defined. 

He  derives  the  Soul -idea  from  the  "savage 
ghost "  which  Dr.  Johnson  defined  to  be  a 
"  kind  of  shadowy  being."  He  j  ustly  remarks 
that  it  arose  (  perhaps)  in  Egypt ;  and  was 
not  invented  by  the  "  People  of  the  Book." 
By  this  term  Moslems  denote  Jews  and 
Christians  who  have  a  recognised  revelation, 
while  their  ignorance  refuses  it  to  Guebres, 
Hindus,  and  Confucians. 

He  evidently  holds  to  the  doctrine  of 
progress.  With  him  protoplasm  is  the 
Yliastron,  the  Prima  Materies.  Our  word 
matter  is  derived  from  the  Sanskrit  TjrnTT 
(matra),  which,  however,  signifies  properly 
the  invisible  type  of  visible  matter ;  in  mod- 
ern language,  the  substance  distinct  from  the 
sum  of  its  physical  and  chemical  properties. 
Thus,  Matra  exists  only  in  thought,  and  is  not 
recognisable  by  the  action  of  the  five  senses. 
His  "Chain  of  Being"  reminds  us  of  Prof. 
Huxley's  Pedigree  of  the  Horse,  Orohippus, 
Mesohippus,  Meiohippus,  Protohippus,  Pleio- 
hippus.  and  Equus.  He  has  evidently  heard 
of  modern  biology,  or  Hylozoism,  which  holds 


NOTES 

its  quarter -million  species  of  living  beings, 
animal  and  vegetable,  to  be  progressive 
modifications  of  one  great  fundamental  unity, 
an  unity  of  so-called  "mental  faculties"  as 
well  as  of  bodily  structure.  And  this  is  the 
jelly-speck.  He  scoffs  at  the  popular  idea 
that  man  is  the  great  central  figure  round 
which  all  things  gyrate  like  marionettes  ;  in 
fact,  the  anthropocentric  era  of  Draper, 
which,  strange  to  say,  lives  by  the  side  of 
the  telescope  and  the  microscope.  As  man 
is  of  recent  origin,  and  may  end  at  an  early 
epoch  of  the  macrocosm,  so  before  his  birth 
all  things  revolved  round  nothing,  and  may 
continue  to  do  so  after  his  death. 

The  Haji,  who  elsewhere  denounces  "com- 
pound ignorance,"  holds  that  all  evil  comes 
from  error;  and  that  all  knowledge  has 
been  developed  by  overthrowing  error,  the 
ordinary  channel  of  human  thought.  He 
ends  this  section  with  a  great  truth.  There 
are  things  which  human  Reason  or  Instinct 
matured,  in  its  undeveloped  state,  cannot 
master;  but  Reason  is  a  Law  to  itself. 
Therefore  we  are  not  bound  to  believe,  or  to 
attempt  belief  in,  any  thing  which  is  con- 
trary or  contradictory  to  Reason.  Here  he 
is  diametrically  opposed  to  Rome,  who  says, 
"  Do  not  appeal  to  History;  that  is  private 
judgment.     Do  not   appeal   to   Holy  Writ; 


ii 


NOTES 

that  is  heresy.  Do  not  appeal  to  Reason  ; 
that  is  Rationalism." 

He  holds  with  the  Patriarchs  of  Hebrew 
Holy  Writ,  that  the  present  life  is  all  suffi- 
cient for  an  intellectual  (not  a  sentimental) 
being ;  and,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  want 
of  a  Heaven  or  a  Hell.  With  far  more 
contradiction  the  Western  poet  sings:  — 

Hell  hath  no  limits,  nor  is  circumscribed 

In  one  self -place  ;  but  when  we  are  in  hell, 

And  where  hell  is  there  must  we  ever  be, 

And,  to  be  short,  when  all  this  world  dissolves, 

And  every  creature  shall  be  purified, 

All  places  shall  be  hell  which  are  not  heaven. 

For  what  want  is  there  of  a  Hell  when  all 
are  pure  ?  He  enlarges  upon  the  ancient 
Buddhist  theory,  that  Happiness  and  Misery 
are  equally  distributed  among  men  and 
beasts  ;  some  enjoy  much  and  suffer  much  ; 
others  the  reverse.  Hence  Diderot  declares, 
"  Sober  passions  produce  only  the  common- 
place .  .  .  the  man  of  moderate  passion 
lives  and  dies  like  a  brute."  And  again  we 
have  the  half-truth  :  — 

That  the  mark  of  rank  in  nature 
Is  capacity  for  pain. 

The   latter  implies    an    equal   capacity   for 

pleasure,  and  thus  the  balance  is  kept. 


112 


NOTES 

Haji  Abdu  then  proceeds  to  show  that 
Faith  is  an  accident  of  birth.  One  of  his 
omitted  distichs  says  :  — 

Race  makes  religion  ;  true  !  but  aye  upon  the  Maker 

acts  the  made, 
A  finite  God,  an  infinite  sin,  in  lieu  of  raising  man, 

degrade. 

In  a  manner  of  dialogue  he  introduces  the 
various  races  each  fighting  to  establish  its 
own  belief.  The  Frank  (Christian)  abuses 
the  Hindu,  who  retorts  that  he  is  of 
Mlenchha,  mixed  or  impure,  blood,  a  term 
applied  to  all  non -Hindus.  The  same  is 
done  by  Nazarene  and  Mohammedan ;  by 
the  Confucian,  who  believes  in  nothing,  and 
by  the  Soofi,  who  naturally  has  the  last 
word.  The  association  of  the  Virgin  Mary 
and  Saint  Joseph  with  the  Trinity,  in  the 
Roman  and  Greek  Churches,  makes  many 
Moslems  conclude  that  Christians  believe 
not  in  three  but  in  five  Persons.  So  an 
Englishman  writes  of  the  early  Fathers, 
"  They  not  only  said  that  3  =  1,  and  that 
1  =  3:  they  professed  to  explain  how  that 
curious  arithmetical  combination  had  been 
brought  about.  The  Indivisible  had  been 
divided,  and  yet  was  not  divided:  it  was 
divisible,  and  yet  it  was  indivisible ;  black 
was  white,  and  white  was  black ;  and  yet 
there  were  not  two  colours  but  one  colour; 


NOTES 

and  whoever  did  not  believe  it  would  be 
damned."  The  Arab  quotation  runs  in  the 
original :  — 

A  hsanu  V-  Makani  P  il-  Fata  U-Jehannamu 
The    best    of    places    for   (the   generous)  youth   is 
Gehenna  : 

Gehenna,  alias  Jahim,  being  the  fiery  place 
of  eternal  punishment.  And  the  second 
saying  Al-  nar  iva  la  'l-Ar  — "  Fire  (of 
Hell)  rather  than  Shame,"  —  is  equally  con- 
demned by  the  Koranist.  The  Gustakhi 
(insolence)  of  Fate  is  the  expression  of 
Umar-i-Khayyam  (St.  xxx) : — 

What,  without  asking  hither  hurried  whence  ? 
And,  without  asking  whither  hurried  hence  ! 

Oh  many  a  cup  of  this  forbidden  wine 
Must  drown  the  memory  of  that  insolence. 

Soofistically,  the  word  means  "the  coquetry 
of  the  beloved  one,"  the  divinae  particula 
auras.    And  the  section  ends  with  Pope's  —  : 

He  can't  be  wrong  whose  life  is  in  the  right. 


II4 


CONCLUSION 

HERE  the  Haji  ends  his  practical  study 
of  mankind.  The  image  of  Destiny 
playing  with  men  as  pieces  is  a  view  common 
amongst  Easterns.  His  idea  of  wisdom  is 
once  more  Pope's :  — 

And  all  our  knowledge  is  ourselves  to  know. 
(Essay  IV.  398.) 

Regret,  i.e.  repentance,  was  one  of  the 
forty-two  deadly  sins  of  the  \ncient  Egyp- 
tians. "  Thou  shalt  not  consume  thy  heart," 
says  the  Ritual  of  the  Dead,  the  negative 
justification  of  the  soul  or  ghost  (Lepsius 
"Alteste  Texte  des  Todtenbuchs ").  We 
have  borrowed  competitive  examination 
from  the  Chinese  ;  and,  in  these  morbid  days 
of  weak  introspection  and  retrospection,  we 
might  learn  wisdom  from  the  sturdy  old 
Khemites.  When  he  sings  "  Abjure  the 
Why  and  seek  the  How,"  he  refers  to  the 
old  Scholastic  difference  of  the  Demonstratio 
propter  quid  (why  is  a  thing?),  as  opposed 
to  Demonstratio  quia  (i.e.  that  a  thing  is). 
The  "  great  Man  "  shall  end  with  becoming 
deathless,  as  Shakespeare  says  in  his  noble 
sonnet :  — 

And  Death  once  dead,  there  's  no  more  dying  then  ! 

"5 


NOTES 

Like  the  great  Pagans,  the  Haji  holds 
that  man  was  born  good,  while  the  Christian, 
"  tormented  by  the  things  divine,"  cleaves  to 
the  comforting  doctrine  of  innate  sinfulness. 
Hence  the  universal  tenet,  that  man  should 
do  good  in  order  to  gain  by  it  here  or  here- 
after; the  "enlightened  selfishness,"  that 
says,  Act  well  and  get  compound  interest  in 
a  future  state.  The  allusion  to  the  "  Theist- 
word "  apparently  means  that  the  votaries 
of  a  personal  Deity  must  believe  in  the 
absolute  foreknowledge  of  the  Omniscient 
in  particulars  as  in  generals.  The  Rule  of 
Law  emancipates  man;  and  its  exceptions 
are  the  gaps  left  by  his  ignorance.  The  wail 
over  the  fallen  flower,  &c,  reminds  us  of 
the  Pulambal  (Lamentations)  of  the  Anti- 
Brahminical  writer,  "  Pathira-Giriyar."  The 
allusion  to  Maya  is  from  Das  Kabir:  — 

Maya  mare,  na  man  mare,  mar  mar  gayS  sarir. 
Illusion  dies,  the  mind  dies  not  though  dead  and 
gone  the  flesh. 

Nirwana,  I  have  said,  is  partial  extinction 
by  being  merged  in  the  Supreme,  not  to  be 
confounded  with  Pari-nirwana  or  absolute 
annihilation.  In  the  former  also,  dying 
gives  birth  to  a  new  being,  the  embodiment 
of  karma  (deeds),  good  and  evil,  done  in  the 
countless  ages  of  transmigration. 


NOTES 

Here  ends  my  share  of  the  work.  On  the 
whole  it  has  been  considerable.  I  have 
omitted,  as  has  been  seen,  sundry  stanzas, 
and  I  have  changed  the  order  of  others. 
The  text  has  nowhere  been  translated 
verbatim ;  in  fact,  a  familiar  European  turn 
has  been  given  to  many  sentiments  which 
were  judged  too  Oriental.  As  the  metre 
adopted  by  Haji  Abdu  was  the  Bahr  Tawil 
(long  verse),  I  thought  it  advisable  to  pre- 
serve that  peculiarity,  and  to  fringe  it  with 
the  rough,  unobtrusive  rhyme  of  the  original. 

Vive,  valeque  ! 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I.  The  Kasidah  |  (couplets)  |  of  Haji  Abdu 
El-Yezdi  |  A  Lay  of  the  Higher  Law  | 
Translated  and  Annotated    |    by   |    His 
Friend  and  Pupil   |   F.  B.   |   London   | 
Bernard  Quaritch,  15  Piccadilly.  |    1880. 
Quarto,  Yellow  wrapper,  Pp.  iv+1-34. 

A  few  copies  were  printed  without  the  name  of 
Quaritch  on  title-page,  viz.  :  London  :  Privately 
Printed,  [n.  d.],  which  Burton  used  for  presenta- 
tion purposes.  Under  date  of  July  19,  1905,  Mr. 
Quaritch 's  successor  writes  : 

"Of  the  1880  edition  only  60  copies  or  so  were 
sold  in  the  course  of  six  or  seven  years  and  the 
remaining  copies  were  returned  to  Burton. 

The  entire  edition  did  not  exceed  250  copies 
both  with  and  without  Quaritch's  imprint. 

II.  The  Kasidah  |  (couplets)  |  of  Haji 
Abdu  Al-Yazdi  |  A  Lay  of  the  Higher 
Law  I  Translated  and  Annotated  by  his 
Friend  and  Pupil,  F.  B.  |  By  |  Captain  Sir 
Richard  F.  Burton  |  K.  C.  M.  G.,  F.  R. 
G.  S.,  &c,  &c,  &c.  I  London  |  H.  S. 
Nichols  and  Co.  |  3  Soho  Square  London 
W  I  MDCCCXCIIII 

Quarto,    Cloth,     Pp.    xvi+1-43.      [100 
numbered  copies  only.] 


121 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

III.  The  Kasidah  |  (couplets)  |  of  Haji 
Abdu  Al-Yazdi  |  A  Lay  of  the  Higher 
Law  |  Translated  and  Annotated  by  his 
Friend  and  Pupil,  F.  B.  |  By  |  Captain 
Sir  Richard  F.  Burton  |  K.  C.  M.  G., 
F.  R.  G.  S.,  &c,  &c,  &c.  |  London  | 
H.  J.  Cook   |   21  Golden   Square  W    | 

MDCCC  | 

Quarto,  Cloth,  Pp.  xvi+1-42.  [250 
numbered  copies.] 

IV.  Besides  the  above  editions  the  text 
and  notes  of  The  Kasidah  are  printed  by 
Lady  Burton  in  her  Life  of  Sir  Richard 
F.  Burton.     Octavo,   2   vols.     (London, 

1893.) 

None    of   these    editions    number  the 
sections  or  the  couplets,  and  in  editions 

II  and  III  the  spelling,  upon  whose 
authority  we  know  not,  is  altered  from 
"  El-Yezdi "  to  "Al-Yazdi."  A  more 
suprising  variant  is  the  "lifting"  entire 
of  a  descriptive  note  written  and  printed 
by  Mr.  Mosher  in  his  List  of  Books  for 
1896,  and  used  by  Mr.  Cook  in  edition 

III  as  his  own  "  Publisher's  Note  "  under 
date  of  April  27th,  1900. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

V.     The  Old  World  Editions  : 

i.     The    Kasidah  of    Haji    |   Abdu    El- 

Yezdi    |    Translated  and  Anno.tated  by 

his  Friend  |  and  Pupil,  F.  B.  |  [Device] 

|  Portland,  Maine  |  Thomas  B.  Mosher 

|  MDCCCXCVI. 

Narrow  Fcap  8vo.  (3fx7)  vellum  bds. 
Pp.  xvi+i-ioo.  (925  copies  on  Van 
Gelder  paper,  and  100  on  Japan  vellum.) 

2.  The  same.  Second  edition,  mdcccxcyiii. 
(925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper,  and  50  on  Japan 
vellum.) 

3.  The  same.  Third  edition,  mdcccc.  The 
Notes  are  printed  in  larger  type  the  same  as  in  the 
text  of  the  poem.  Pp.  xvi+1-124.  (925  copies 
on  Van  Gelder  paper,  and  100  on  Japan  vellum.) 

4.  The  same.  Fourth  edition,  mdcccciii.  Pp. 
xvi+1-124.    (925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper.) 

5.  The  same.  Fifth  edition,  mdccccyi.  Pp. 
xvi-f-1-126.    (925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper.) 

6.  The  same.  Sixth  edition,  mdccccviii.  Pp. 
xvi+1-126.  (925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper, 
and  50  on  Japan  vellum.) 

7.  The  same.  Seventh  edition,  mdccccix.  Pp. 
xvi+1-126.    (925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper.) 

8.  The  same.  Eighth  edition,  mdccccxi.  Pp. 
xvi-f-1-124.  (925  copies  on  Van  Gelder  paper, 
and  50  on  Japan  vellum.)  With  frontispiece 
portrait  from  the  etching  by  Flameng. 


-3 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

VI.  Sir  Richard  F  Burton  |  The  Kasidah 
|  Portland  Maine  |  Thomas  B  Mosher 
|  MDCCCCV 

Royal  4to,  J  vellum  bds.    Pp.  viii-f-1-56. 

This  volume  is  set  in  14-point  old-style 
Roman  type,  each  couplet  in  unbroken 
lines  across  the  page  ;  the  various  sec- 
tions opening  with  a  singularly  bold 
initial  in  color.  Printed  on  right  hand 
side  of  the  leaf  only.  The  frontispiece 
is  a  Bierstadt  reproduction  of  the  etch- 
ing by  Leopold  Flameng  after  Lord 
Leighton's  portrait,  the  exact  size  of  the 
original  plate,  7x8^  inches. 

125  numbered  copies  on  Van  Gelder 
hand-made  paper;  15  copies  on  Japan 
vellum,  numbered  and  signed,  and  5  copies 
on  pure  vellum  printed  for  special  sub- 
scribers.    (Entirely  out  of  print.) 


